


The Devil's Due

by thewinterking



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Mob, Frottage, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Slurs, midwestern gothic, more in love than the summary would suggest, mutual fixation and codependency, neon noir, out of order events, sensationalized crime, sensationalized violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-09-02 14:42:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterking/pseuds/thewinterking
Summary: Whatever Gabriel had planned was bigger than the bomb on La Madriguera and more jarring than his taunting reveal. He needed a plan, an escape route, and a weapon.
  Considering the occasion, bullets felt impersonal; he wanted a knife.
THERE'S HELL TO PAY — a neon noir retelling for Overwatch.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> note as of 4/20/18: this fic is slowly being revised and updated. it's about 2k/33k. once it's done, the chapters will all be updated and more chapters will be added.  
> 4/21/18: 3k/33k.  
> 4/25/18: 5k/33k.
> 
> This work is kind of a love letter to neon noir movies that have emerged from the neo noir film genre. It treats violence with sensationalism in a way that might be uncomfortable for some readers. Keeping with the genre, there’s also a suspension of believability for police protocol, police presence and the addition of “supernatural” elements. 
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter notes will issue trigger warnings in extreme cases as needed.

 

 

His client was six minutes late. With tablets and smartphones so prevalent, few people even noticed when a meeting started late or ran over time. They bowed their heads and ran their thumbs over the keys without a care in the world, but Jack Morrison was not in possession of such an object or the patience needed to pay attention to it. Each second that Ella Harris ran past her time was another _tic-toc ...tic-toc_ in his mind. It grew louder by the second until it was thudding in the back of his head like a bomb ready to go off.

Not a single sip had been taken out of the green cup of coffee, but it gave him something to do with his hands while he waited. Blunt nails clacked against it over and over before the sound grew too alike to the imagined ticking. He pulled back from it, sank against the faux leather backing of the booth, and looked elsewhere.

_Tic-toc…  tic-toc…  tic-toc…_

Across the restaurant, a young girl was desperately trying to kick her brother beneath the table while her parents fought to contain their brewing argument. At the counter, the barista tucked a wrapped scone into his apron when he thought no one was looking. Beside him, two girls spoke fervently about some new television series that had captivated them.

Seven minutes late. Jack drew his palm over his stubbled jaw and tried to think quiet into his agitated bones. It didn’t help; his knee gave a jolt beneath the table, then bounced rapidly, unbidden. _Ten minutes_ , he told himself. _Stay for ten minutes and then you can leave_.

Another glance at his disposable flip-phone told him that she was _still_ seven minutes late.  _Stay for nine_ , he bargained with himself. Just watching the digital clock turn to 2:38 PM felt like a lifetime. _Stay for nine, and if you see her in the parking lot you can come back inside-_

“Matthew? Matthew Clarke?”

The phone snapped shut with a _click_. Ella Harris was a pretty woman somewhere around Jack’s age, but she wore her late thirties far better than he. Her hair was thick and styled with curls, and though she dressed casually, he could tell just by looking at her that half the reason she had run late was because she spent a great deal of time on her makeup. Her warm smile was likely meant to catch him off guard. She even jutted her hand over the table to shake after sitting down.

“I’m Ella-”

“Harris, yeah,” Jack answered at once, wiping sweat-slick palms onto his jeans before bothering to grasp the extended hand. The awkwardness of their greeting didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest, even as he cleared his throat and hunched forward. “You’re late.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, traffic was terrible. They had some kind of construction or accident back near my house — I didn't get a good look.” Her red smile barely faltered. Ella's cloying sigh came with the idle shrug of her shoulders, a silent declaration of _what can you do?_  She had the decency to look chagrined for a millisecond, but then her lips pulled back to reveal white teeth and she beamed at him in a way pretty girls always did when they wanted something. It made her look remarkably and foolishly happy for someone who believed her husband was having an affair.

“Right. Look. I don’t know what your friend told you-”

“Therese.”

“- yeah, her. I don’t know what she told you about how this works, but I’m just providing information. I don’t document, I won’t testify in court on your behalf, and I’m not going to give you anything except time, date, and location if it’s happening.”

A breathy laugh bubbled from Ella’s lips and her slender palm pressed over the table. The outer edge of her well kept eyebrows rose with consideration, as though this was a negotiation table and these were merely opening proposals “Therese mentioned that, but I was hoping you would make an exception for me. I just need a picture or two and maybe some of his records.”

The bounce of his knee finally stopped cold. He didn’t need to glance down to know the proximity between the two of them had drastically shrunk, and that any moment she was going to outright lay her palm atop his. “No.”

Her grin faltered. “Matthew, if you’re already doing the work it’s no big deal. I can pay you extra.”

“The answer’s no.”

Her hand withdrew like she had been burned. “Oh. You’ll have to forgive me, Mr. Clarke. That’s fine, I guess. The information will work, I’ll just have to use the same private detective Therese used to get the rest.”

Jack smiled — a cool twist of his lips that failed to reach the blue of his eyes. Every careful inch he leaned forward was another Ella drew back from, until she was once again firmly on her side of the table. “You misunderstand me, Mrs. Harris. The answer wasn’t _no_ , I won’t take the photos, it was _no_ , I won’t take this job for you.”

“Clarke-”

Whatever else she said fell to deaf ears. Jack swept himself up out of the seat, taking with him the Motorola cellphone and paper cup. Her heels echoed behind him the entire way to the door as she scurried to catch up. First, she apologized, then she grew offended, until finally she started swearing.

It lasted a good fifteen seconds before Ella fell silent, either due to the hard line of his shoulders staring back at her, or the small crowd gathering along the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. Jack liked to think it was the former.

Los Angeles was uncommonly warm for October and the drought still carried on. Walking a solid mile to reach his parked car should have felt like a burden, but Jack knew it to be a necessity. The green paper cup with girlish handwriting scrawling _Matthew_ across it had to be discarded in one trash can, the SIM card of his disposable phone snapped and tossed out in two others, until finally he could wipe clean the burner of any fingerprints and drop it in an alley dumpster.

Precautions born out of paranoia. No one was truly looking for him and no one had filed any kind of missing person’s report the last time he had checked. His mother had died shortly after he had enlisted in the army, and his father nearly five years ago. But, that didn’t mean someone couldn’t start overturning stones and come knocking on his door.

Thom Reynolds. Bryan Grant, Erik Baker, Matthew Clarke. The aliases went on and on.

The heat grew worse inside the aging Pathfinder, and when the air conditioning failed to grow cold, he was forced to roll down the windows for the entire journey home. Something was rattling under the hood that would soon need to be repaired; how many times he could fix the old Nissan before it started to come apart again was beyond him.

Home was a studio apartment wedged between a deteriorating neighborhood and a mall that had used underhanded tactics to force owners out of their residences. White stucco walls and brown shingled rooftops, most of which played host to a unruly looking pigeons, greeted him when he pulled into a narrow parking space. The entire complex had been built back in the 80s, but renovations came slow and often too late. Some buildings sat completely condemned due to faulty electric wiring that was prone to catch on fire. It wasn’t ideal and it wasn't easy on the eyes, but the landlord had let him move in without needing any ID or credit to look into. All he had to do was make his payments on time.

Jack turned off the engine and made his way to the sun bleached metal mailbox cornering his building. Local shopping ads braced glossy political ads the size of postcards. Vote for Hernandez for District Attorney, vote for Wallace for District Court Judge, vote for Duke for Los Angeles Sheriff --

Garrett Duke's familiar face stared up at Jack with a broad-faced smile, or he would have if his eyes had not been scratched into white x’s. Each endorsement that lined his face, from the police union to the DA’s office, had similarly been etched out. The rest of the mail went temporarily forgotten beneath the photo.

Tugging the keys from the box, Jack turned and started down the sidewalk to his apartment. It wasn’t until he was halfway up the stairs leading to his door that he bothered turning over the advertisement to find another note staring back at him.

No white scratches -- just a red marker scrawling a messy: _CAN DUKE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT? YOU_ _OWE_ _HIM AFTER YOUR JANE DOE CASE._

The mail bracketing the note slipped out of his hands, carding down through the backless steps. His gasp was ugly and too loud to his own ears. Jack jerked, turning to sweep his eyes out across the parking lot for whatever responsible party lurked. Near the condemned buildings, a woman walked with her toddler on her hip. At the main road, someone was unloading their groceries from their backseat.

His heart felt like it had wedged past his ribs and wanted to punch through his chest. The pulse of it drowned out the roar of the traffic, the hum of the air conditioning units, and the shouting coming from two doors down. The first step taken again caught the toe of his boot and nearly sent him tripping, if not for the vice-like grasp on the rail.

Where was he going to go, he wondered dimly. The thought bloomed into fruition from the white noise in his head, bright and painfully clear. Someone had found out where he lived despite all his meticulous planning. Someone had tracked him down and thought they'd fuck with him. Was he just going to rush inside to hide until they came to his door?

Garrett Duke’s eyeless face still beamed up at him as he jammed the keys into the deadbolt. Then, he seized through the threshold without second thought. If someone or something was waiting inside, it was best to face it head on rather than wait until fear took hold.

The studio apartment was in the exact state that he left it. There were dishes in the sink that had yet to be washed and the bed remained crumpled and unmade.  The only order in the cramped space came from his desk; papers were stacked neatly and detailed with extreme care — and when they outstayed their welcome, they were purged right down into the shredder. There was no computer in the apartment at all; his brand of suspicion meant taking a trip to the library each time he needed to look something up.

So how had someone _found_ him?

Jack tossed down the note with his keys and barreled into the bathroom. His fingers jammed into the porcelain tiles of the counter before one hand hastily twisted the handle of the sink. Bending, he splashed several handfuls of water onto his face and braced himself there, peering up at himself into the mirror.

Blue blood-shot eyes greeted him. Youth had fled him in recent years, turning the stark gold of his hair to an ashy blonde. He was already peppering with grey here and there, and while it might have looked refined on some men, it made Jack feel old. And it wasn’t age that he could blame for the jut of his cheekbones; his diet had been so poor that he could feel himself growing underweight.

He was weathered, for lack of a better word, and currently sporting two days of scruff along his jaw. On good days he almost didn’t recognize himself. How had anyone else?

The thought lanced through his mind over and over. Straightening, Jack brought the hand towel to his face and ignored the deep furrow of his brow reflecting back at him.

His partner used to tell him to take himself out of the equation to get the full scope of a crime scene. Working homicide required a clear mind, and apparently Jack had _too much empathy_ and was _too hasty_ in his conclusions. Sometimes haste had worked out in their favor; he liked to think he had a quick brain that knew how to make a decision when down to the wire.

Stepping out of the bathroom, Jack had his decision. He paced to the bed, dropped to the floor and dragged out a metal case beneath it. His thumb slotted over the combination lock, rolling out 1-9-7-6 before it opened.

Black gun metal pieces glinted up in what little light filtered through the closed blinds.  Assembling the M9 was quick work. When the magazine clipped in with a satisfying _snap_ , Jack tucked the gun into the back of his waistband and pulled the hem of his white t-shirt over it.

His watch read 4:06 by the time he climbed into his car, pulled his seat-belt on, and deposited Garrett Duke’s cryptic note into the armrest. Hot air blasted from the air conditioning again. The engine rattled worse as it idled at stop lights.

Westbound, the sun turned the smoggy streets of Los Angeles into a gilded paradise — pretty to glimpse, but impossible to stare at without feeling the strain behind your eyes. It didn’t matter much that he couldn’t read the street signs to confirm his direction. He knew the route like the back of his hand, as though there were some invisible string pulling him along. Jack was certain he could have been dropped anywhere and still made his way to the long abandoned hostel.

There was no careful consideration to park a distance away. The Pathfinder took a sharp left, coming to stop at the curb across from the old _Sunset Sights_ building. The face of it had once been painted a sickly shade of orange and white, offsetting the vibrant neon sign that buzzed above its door. Officially, it had been a youth hostel — the only source of income on this long decaying street of old bars and rundown storage units.

Jack adjusted his mirrors, staring behind himself to sweep the street. A couple of cars carried onward from the nearby intersection, but none turned his way. The only pedestrians were kids meandering past with backpacks strapped to them — probably looking to stay out as long as possible before they’d have to go home.  Satisfied, he turned off the engine and grabbed the makeshift note from the armrest. Then, he slid out of the car and made his way across the narrow two lane road.

No chains guarded the doors from intruders. A fading orange notice warned trespassers to stay out, and graffitied slabs of two-by-fours blocked anyone from merely taking a brick to the first floor windows.

The inside wasn’t much better, Jack thought grimly as he drew the Beretta from his waistband. The last time he had been in here, the lobby was left dark with no more than dated Christmas lights twinkling around it. Fake palm trees gathering dust sat in each corner, their plastic fan leafs fraying terribly.

Now, it looked like black mold was growing along the walls, which sported a patchwork of holes that went straight through to the rooms behind them. The floors, once a cheap linoleum, were torn up to the cement foundation beneath. Jack tried to pay it all little mind as he cleared the corners of room after room. When he was certain there was no threat within the first floor, his elbow bent, and the barrel of the old military grade Beretta sank to the side.

Sunset Sights had become a decaying memorial to an ugly history, and while it was still standing, there was some poetic justice in its state. No more was it an endless maze of sleepy halls decorated by flashing neon flamingo signs and gauze curtains. Even the doors, once black and padlocked, were missing entirely.

Jack craned his neck as he found the staircase leading to the second floor. The railing was gone entirely, but that was damage he had been present for.  _CAN DUKE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT?_ Jack exhaled slow and moved up the creaking stairs, listening for any further activity. The gun once again been rose to his sight line, his finger resting boldly on the trigger.

_Easy. You’re not in Iraq anymore, Morrison. You’re going to kill someone like that._

Another exhale, this one shakier than the last. His index finger away from it like he’d been burned, and tucked back down around the hilt of the M9.

The second floor was similar in layout to the first: a long hall with rows of doors on either side of them, torn up carpet, and little light but what slipped through decaying walls. The only difference were the black doors themselves, still barely clinging to their frames. Whoever had removed them from downstairs hadn't bothered with these. Each presented an obstacle that sent his anxiety spiking; each had to be nearly kicked in and cleared before he could move onto the next.

_YOU_ _OWE_ _HIM AFTER YOUR JANE DOE CASE._

Why bring him to Sunset Sights?

_Bang._ One door kicked in, one room cleared of possible intruders. _Bang_. Another door. _Bang, Bang, Bang_. By the time he had five rooms cleared, his finger had slipped back onto the trigger and his hands rattled so harshly he thought he might drop the gun.

_Bang_. The sixth door, the center most on the second floor, swung back harshly when he stepped through. Had it not been for the wide arcing window that faced the street below, Jack would have found himself under a veil of darkness. Once upon a time, there had been a bed propped right against that window. The headboard was painted metal made in the shape of a golden heart, and the blankets were pink velour. They hadn’t bothered to even change it; a dried red spot turning into a sickly brown had still smeared across the top of it when they entered that room all those years ago.

The ghost of that memory lingered just out of sight; it felt like a presence standing over his shoulder, watching him as he took step after step deeper into the room. The sun had already tipped over the tops of the adjacent building outside, but its rays cast a patch of paper taped to the grimy window in perfect silhouette.

Each wary foot forward brought the paper into view until he could make out the material of it — grey. A newspaper clipping. A portrait of a man hung beneath its bold header.

When he was close enough, his youthful face stared back at him, smiling in front of an red, white and blue backdrop. The title above it declared _Iraq Veteran Makes Mark in LAPD_. He didn’t need to read the type beneath to know what the three year old story detailed: Indiana kid enrolls in the army after September 11th, becomes a hero, moves to the big city afterward and continues to serve by joining the police department. And when the story just can’t get anymore wholesome and American, he becomes a Detective in major crimes and gets promoted to Captain.

The gun dropped to his side as he pulled the stale newspaper clip from the window. A single glance was given to the adjacent roof tops, the shuttered windows, the street below. He was being watched, someone was fucking with him and -

Smoke hissed from the hood of his car below, a single plume of grey that curled up into the air with warning. The Pathfinder erupted into a fireball with a cacophonous _BOOM!_ in the next second,  and the wave of that explosion reverberated violently off the window. Bits of twisted steel flung out in every direction until the SUV was nothing but a burning husk.

 

* * *

 

_“... All I’m sayin’ is I wouldn’t say no to fuckin’ Mrs. Brady. If that makes me a granny-fucker, then I’m cool with that,” grinned Russo without an ounce of shame. He sat wedged between Santiago and Parker inside the Humvee — the only one not jostling around from the rough terrain beneath them._

_“I can respect that,” Parker answered._

_Santiago balked. “That’s sick, man.”_

_Murphy, strapped into the passenger seat, only rolled his eyes and kept his sight glued out onto the road in front of them. They were a line of vehicles, all making the long trek back to base after yet another three week mission that could hardly be called a success. That was their reality; shuffled around endlessly in maddening heat for a goal that seemed to be nonexistent._

_“Hey, Morrison,” called Russo, grabbing the back of the front seats to lean forward. “You’re a good lookin’ guy. You got a hot mom? She got big ole titties on her?”_

_“The_ fuck _, man?” shouted Santiago, hauling him back bodily. “His fuckin’ mom is dead, what the hell is_ wrong _with you?”_

_“Oh — oh shit, Morrison — my bad, my bad, my bad. I keep forgetting. You know I’m just fuckin’ around. I just talk shit, you know that.”_

_Jack knew his smile was a thin one, but he shrugged his shoulders in good show even as his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Yeah, Russo. I know. It’s all good.”_

_“No, it ain’t all good. This guy’s been talkin’ about everyone’s moms since day one. Jesus, Russo, get your shit under control,” Santiago cut in. “Fuckin’ weird ass obsession.”_

_“I said I’m_ sorry _,” whined Russo. “I don’t see you offering up good conversation.”_

_“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a pervert.”_

_“I’m not a-”_

_There had been a lot of training regarding IEDs on the open road, but nothing really prepared a soldier for seeing them go off for the first time. One would have been bad, and two a disaster — this was a massacre. The first Humvee hit the buried explosive head on. The next swerved left off the road to avoid crashing, only to hit another embedded. The vehicles scattered one by one, crashing into each other or turning and hitting another bomb. The road became a haze of black, red, and smoldering metal, each going up in flames one after another._

 

* * *

 

The hotel room was far from the type of luxury he had grown accustomed to, but sacrifices had to be made for a good vantage point. There was no balcony, but the north-facing window ran from the floor to the ceiling and sat high enough that the neighborhoods that ran parallel were in full view — even the most run-down of them.

No sound accompanied the blast of smoke that shot straight into the air. From this distance, it billowed silently, a stark black shroud that for a few satisfying moments turned the street of _La Madriguera_ into a makeshift war zone.

A low whistle came from the phone in his hand. “Damn, you were _not_ kidding about the impact. Think it tore through every window on the block.”

“And he was watching?”

“ _Oh_ yeah. I gotta hand it to you, he rushed right in like you said he would. Might even get a few scars for his trouble.”

The only response was a low and considering ‘ _hm’_ before his thumb ended the call.

 

* * *

 

“Sir, you’re in shock. You need to keep still and let us take you to a hospital-”

Jack’s focus was shot to shit and the light being shined back and forth in his eyes didn’t help. Paramedics had tried to wrap a space blanket around his shoulders and guide him to the awaiting ambulance, but one touch sent him jerking away. His senses were at war with each other, each trying to fight past the lingering smoke in the air to direct his attention this way and that. Between the scrape in his throat, the burn to his nostrils, and the glaze in his eyes that made everything in the vicinity look blurred, he felt raw and utterly exposed.

Thirty people had swarmed to the area after the impact, swearing up and down that they had seen what had happened. More than one fought over their conflicting stories with the police; several others were inching into news camera frames where reporters speculated on the cause and the perpetrator. It was just the kind of madhouse he didn’t want to be in — a cage of firefighters, questioning officers that ran the risk of recognizing him, and damned opportunists that probably didn’t care if a dozen bodies were pulled from the Pathfinder’s carnage.

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t. The words were gravel in his throat and static was seeping like an open wound from the top of his head. “Really,” he added, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.

_Not now, not now, not now_.

“Mr. Yates, you look like-”

“I’m a soldier,” he cut in sharply. It sounded more hostile than he liked. Even the smile he forced out felt too tight, too strained. “Iraq. Seen a lot of shit far worse than this. Just…”

“Brings it back?” the man finished with a frown. His tone changed into one of false sincerity, dripping with a sweetness that bordered on saccharine. “If you think you’re going to have an _episode_ ,  it’d be best if you came with us.”

Jack barked out a bitter laugh and ran his hand through his hair, only to stop short and clench the strands tight into his fist. A film of ash coated his scalp; he didn’t need to inspect his palm to know how it’d look. After the incident, it had taken him days to finally scrub the lingering smoke, sand, and blood from his skin.

Static continued to crawl south, down the back of his neck and across the width of his shoulders.

_Not now, not now, not now_.

“I already gave the police my statement,” he lied. “You patched my head and did your job. So, you can stand there and talk some bullshit about shock and episodes, or you can let me go home to my family.”

“Jones,” called a woman bundled in a navy blue jacket that also marked her as an EMT. “Just let the guy go. You have three other people you can help out.”

“But-”

Warm weather also meant warm nights, but with a chill pouring down his spine more rapidly than he could help, Jack bodily pushed past the paramedic and ignored his offended shout. Cold _did_ mean shock. The Beretta hidden beneath his waistband should have been heated from his skin, but now only felt like a brand of ice against the small of his back.

Jack dug his trembling fingers into the pockets of his jeans and made his way down the water-slick road. His eyes still hadn’t cleared, and it was the blur of dancing blue-red police lights that ultimately led him into the proper direction.

_Not now, not now_ , _not now_.

Time stretched and shrank as he ducked under the yellow police tape and slipped past news vans. His feet carried him too quick and too slow, and no matter how much he tried to correct his pace nothing felt right. The same cool static bristled down his arms and coiled somewhere deep inside the cavity of his chest. No matter how far he walked, he could still feel the crowd at his back and hear the _whoop_ of the police sirens, until suddenly it _was_ gone. All of it.

One look around told him he had brought himself to an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Street lights and metal power units dotted the road here and there, but it was otherwise wholly empty of life. The traffic of the freeway whirled past, sounding like sharp gusts of wind somewhere on his far left. No car, no phone, no idea where the hell he was.

“Shit.” Then angrier, “ _shit_.” A barrage of curses spilled from his lips and the fury he felt only got worse. His boot slammed into the metal casing at the base of the light over and over until his fists joined in. They collided into the pole, thudding hard against it enough to turn his knuckles bloody. It should have been the scent of that blood that filled his nostrils, or the spilled motor oil on the road, or even salt carried in the air from the coast.

It should have been, but it was ash instead. Ash, sand, burning oil, and charred flesh, all filling his nostrils and lodging into his throat. Jack gasped around it, _tried to_ , because once there sat like a stone. His fingers grappled at his throat and crawled to his mouth because he couldn’t breathe, no matter how hard his lungs expanded to take in air.

Santiago. Murphy. Russo. Parker.

And unspoken, a name that lay in the cracked lines of his lips.

_CAN DUKE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT?_

 

* * *

 

The bus home played host to a sea of bodies that passed through in streaks of blue, red, orange, purple. He didn’t care enough to lift his head from the window to really look at any one of them. A fleeting glance as they stepped on, and then it was back to watching traffic weave around him.

Numb legs took him off the bus and guided him mindlessly up to the second floor studio apartment. In silence, he hauled out a worn khaki duffel bag and haphazardly packed it. Some shirts, underwear, and two pairs of jeans. It was hardly the extent of his wardrobe.

The M9 remained tucked on his person, even as he snapped its reinforced case shut and picked it up. Duffel strap pulled over his head and case in hand, Jack turned to his desk and retrieved the only stationary item atop it. While papers from cases shifted piles until they were pushed through the shredder, the moleskine book had stayed put through it all.

He didn’t bother shutting the door when he passed into the night.

 

* * *

 

It was a slow ascent to the ramshackle apartment not for any other reason but to relish in the decay. His polished shoes sat in stark contrast to the flecking steps, as did his fitted gloves that dragged along the rusted rail. The past year had been especially good to him, and the knowledge that his outfit likely cost more than Jack Morrison’s rent churned pleasantly in the low of his stomach.

Stepping through the threshold of the studio was a reward in itself. An unkempt kitchen, yellowing stains from water leaks in the ceiling, and second hand furniture all told the story of a man that had fallen very far from grace. There wasn’t even a television or a string of cords that signaled a laptop had once been anywhere in the place. He lived worse than a monk trying to atone for daily sins.

_Trying_. It was the kind of gesture Morrison thought meant something.

The single window was nothing but a pathetically small square that no doubt failed to catch any real sunlight. Grabbing the corded string, he tugged the blinds up to reveal the parking lot below. Dawn light was still an hour away, keeping the shroud of night firmly wrapped around the complex.

Gabriel Reyes took in the reflection staring back at him. In the time since his death, he had allowed his hair to grow out from its typically shorn state. Grey dusted both his temples and the goatee that bracketed his full mouth. The scars that he had acquired on _La Madriguera_ all those years ago had long since healed, turning instead into pale etchings along his cheek. He had grown so much older in such a short span of time, and with it, more severe. Little eased the harsh furrow of his brow.

His gaze slid away from himself and refocused on the maze of parked cars. When he spoke, it was with a voice that rumbled out of his chest like honeyed smoke, “Where you running, Jackie?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> [**U N O**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-nGoFd9hM) *
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr.](http://thewinterking.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> * Each chapter will feature a song meant to be listened to after the last scene.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features **discussion over human trafficking and drugs.** This casts a very bad light on several characters because human trafficking itself is deplorable. I am making special note of it because that bad light will continue and I’m not going to make note of it again (beyond chapter specific trigger warnings). There are a lot of conflicts set up; most will be addressed at a later date or in an independent companion piece. I have tried to plot this as cleanly as possible to get to resolutions (and admittedly, in crime / mob genres, there is no **moral** resolution). If these are themes that you are not comfortable with reading or if you take exception to the representations here, this fic probably isn’t for you.

 

 

The contrast between the two brothers went beyond night and day metaphors. Sitting side-by-side across the mahogany table, Gabriel had to wonder what the hell it was the _Shimada-gumi_ intended to represent. The eldest, one Hanzo Shimada of twenty-five years, carried a deep crease in his brow that did not match his youth. There would be a day in the future where all of his stern expressions — frowning, squinting, and jaw-setting — caught up to him and lined his face. It would give him the rough refinement he so desperately sought, but here and now, Gabriel found he looked far more petulant than dangerous.

Beside him sat — if it could be called that — Genji Shimada. Three years younger, he hadn’t quite hit the same _aesthetic_ maturity of the rest as his kin. The lime green hair he sported would have been the brightest spot in the room if not for his equally flamboyant attire. While Hanzo wore a sharp black suit sans tie, Genji had opted for round sunglasses  — in doors, at nine in the morning — and what could only be described as a translucent pink jacket.

The eyesore clashing with his dining room decor he could tolerate; the clear lack of attention and respect, he could not. Each inch Genji slipped deeper into his chair was another strike against his own patience, and by the time the younger brother had slouched so low that his chin was level with the table, Gabriel had enough.

“Maybe it’s best we reschedule this,” he cut in, his words rolling right over Hanzo’s eloquent and over-prepared monologue about why they ought to do business. “Until all parties are actually present.”

Hanzo’s eyes widened before shooting sidelong at his sprawled brother. Something harsh flew out of his mouth in their mother tongue — an order to sit up, because Genji bit back a sigh and shoved himself up. _Better_.

“You will have to forgive my brother; the time difference does not agree with him. You have my word that he is paying attention and has been looking forward to this meeting with the same diligence as my family.” The latter of those words weren’t directed at his end of the table, but rather reproachfully toward Genji.

For his part, Genji dropped his chin in his hand and gave a lazy nod. “It was my brother’s boring speech putting me to sleep, not your company, Mr. Reaper. I am here and invested.”

 _Mr. Reaper_. The pseudonym lost much of its formidable edge with that honorific slapped before it. Caught somewhere between agitation and exasperation, Gabriel swept himself out of his seat and went for the red embossed cigarette pack and lighter before him. There was a shadow of familiarity in this  — one that he refuse he refused to name — found in the way his fingers sheltered the flame of the zippo, to the slant of the cigarette between his lips, and the jut of his hip against the table. Muscle memory was a hell of a thing.

Smoke left him in a harsh exhale, and just as quickly, Gabriel drew the cigarette away to ash it against the tin. A fleeting glance was given to the brothers across from him and, with some measure of reluctance, he slid the red pack and lighter toward them. Though Hanzo made no move for it, Genji wasted no time.

“I’m a busy man,” Gabriel began, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose between his tattooed fingers. He cut a harsh figure in front of them, standing clad in his black turtleneck and dark slacks, wearing his mounting impatience like a cloak around his shoulders. Some people forgot who he was and what he was capable of. Put some nice clothes on a man and people start to think he’s a nice man. Hanzo’s subtle shift said he got the message loud and clear. _Good_.

“So here’s what we’re going to do,” he continued. “You’re going to tell me what the Shimada-gumi want and I’m going to tell you what I’ll _give_ you.”

Genji’s mouth split into a wide fanged grin as his head lolled toward Hanzo.

His brother didn’t share the look. “We are prepared to leave the drug cartel to you in exchange for running east end clubs with access to your port connection.”

It was Gabriel’s turn to smile. Silence stretched between the three as he went once more for the tin on the table. _Tap tap tap_. Ash knocked off the cherry of the cigarette and though he raised his hand to bring it back to his lips, he hesitated. His smile was growing by the second under the shadow of his palm, transforming from an amused quirk to something as ugly and sharp as a knife’s edge. “Drugs for clubs,” he repeated, deceptively soft.

“We were told you have left the east … quiet.”

“Neglected,” Genji clarified.

Gabriel hummed.

“We are also prepared to make a sizable investment in your arms trade with the access I speak of — both in and out of Los Angeles. These are agreeable terms, are they not?”

The laugh that rumbled out of Gabriel started low in his chest — a quiet thing that faded, only to return a moment later louder than before. His body drew back from the table, his knees bent, and his head craned up as it became more funny by the second.  He knew the look transformed his face — the open mouth laughing — because though Hanzo grimaced, Genji brightened and let loose his own chuckle. Somehow that made it all the better.

“ _Genji_ ,” chastised Hanzo.

“No — he’s got _hah_ — he’s got the right idea,” Gabriel cut in, turning back to the two. The laughter had waned but his broad smile remained. Long legs stretched behind him as he leaned down bracingly against the mahogany surface. _Tap tap tap_ the cigarette went against the ashtray, this time harder than before. “Drugs for clubs,” he repeated again, moving to take a drag.

The change in his expression came as quick as a blink, as sudden as the silence between heartbeats. Thick smoke seeped from his mouth, passing over his face like a curtain until it billowed off. When it had gone, what remained was the hard line of Gabriel’s brow and the subtle makings of a frown. It was hard to imagine amusement had ever touched the weathered edges of his face, let alone danced in his dark eyes. “Funny thing about rumors — they go both ways.

“I happen to have it on good authority that the Shimada-gumi don’t run drugs.” Watching them, did he even blink? The ice coating his demeanor was glazing his voice, and every flash of teeth was reminiscent of a snarl, a baring of fangs. “Against your code, isn’t that right?”

Genji’s smile had gone. Hanzo drew his hands back from the table’s edge and parted his lips to respond, but no sound came with it. The Shimada-gumi had sent two _boys_ to do the work of men, and thought they would be able to carve out a backhanded deal with sly games and false flattery.

The harsh line of Hanzo’s brow had finally smoothed out, if only because he was hopelessly out of depth. At least he looked his age now — a twenty-something year old who had blindly walked into negotiations with no more than his father’s words in his pocket.

Gabriel could even pinpoint the moment that realization crested over him. Though he valiantly tried to school his face into the constant mask of neutrality, his eyes tightened and focused elsewhere in the room.

“Here’s my offer: you let me worry about every club, parlor, hostel, and fucking _street corner_ from Santa Monica to Anaheim. I _let you_ lean on the south, and work with you on arms with access through my connection.”

Genji’s gaze hadn’t broken from Gabriel’s, but he was the first to lean toward the other brother and say something low. Hanzo returned the look and with a measure of unease, nodded his head in agreement.

“We will need time to relay the offer.”

Gabriel shifted to straighten, and ashed the rest of his spent cigarette into the tray. “Fine.”

“And we will contact you when we know more.”

“No.” Pulling his suit jacket off the back of his chair, Gabriel slid it on and smoothed his hands down its lapels. “I’ll put someone with you — he owes me a favor and he’s eager to repay it.”

 

* * *

 

“You _idiot_.”

Ana Amari had changed very little within the last two years. Her black hair as drawn up into a disheveled, sweat-slick ponytail and her face was similarly flushed. She had either just finished running on the treadmill, or was going on one of her legendary cleaning sprees that saw half her house turned upside down. Even more telling — she wore the same gym shorts and a faded _Depeche Mode_ shirt Jack had seen her in more than once, and still retained the ability to glare a man into submission.

The elevated doorframe of her home gave her a slight height advantage on Jack, but it was one she sought to use to her full advantage. “You absolute _idiot_. Fall off the face of the planet without any consideration to your friends! I thought you were _dead_.”

Jack jammed his hands into the pockets of his jean coat and tried to keep his shoulders from hunching. He could stare unflinchingly while a commanding officer bellowed in his face, yet the second Ana spoke with such raw emotion, the guilt descended. It was an oppressive weight pushing against the top of his back, piercing through the center of his chest. He _hated_ that feeling -- especially when he had worked so hard to evade it.

“Ana, I’m sorry. I wish …” _Fuck_. His throat threatened to close up on each word, constricting so tightly that the next had to be whispered, “... I wish I had an excuse. After, I just couldn’t -”

He didn’t have to finish the thought. Ana’s palm slipped noisily from the door as she rushed him, engulfing him into a tight hug. She was a head shorter than him but managed to yank him bodily down into an embrace all the same.  Her sighed, “ _idiot,_ ” was softer this time, tinged with understanding for the unspoken. “Come here. What did you do to your head? Nevermind -- I don’t want to know. I’ve got tea going inside. I should be wringing your neck and I’m coddling you and offering tea  — do you see what a good friend _I_ am?”

Shuffling inside after her, he couldn’t help but quirk a smile at that. Motherhood agreed with her; Fareeha was only ten and yet Ana had already mastered the art of guilt tripping everyone in a three mile radius. They were never said in any serious vein, instead delivered with an overly dramatic flare that had always made Jack bark in laughter. _You want the real thing, you should meet_ my _mother_ , Ana had told him. He had taken her up on that offer once; lunch with Ana and Mrs. Amari was spent watching the two of them go back and forth for nearly an hour in a spectacular escalating fashion. Each time Mrs. Amari would say something hyperbolic, Ana would try to make things worse by adding her own spin.

 _Ana, think about what this is doing to Fareeha! No father in sight, her friends will think her mother is a…_ lesbian.

_Oh god, mama. You’re right — if people think I’m a lesbian, how am I going to steal my neighbors’ husbands? _

Her home was just as he remembered it, minus the Halloween decor. Some of the furniture had changed and certainly the rooms had been rearranged ten times over, but it still carried a warm scent as though food was perpetually being prepared. The kitchen was light and airy and the windows were thrown open -- so she _had_ been cleaning. Framed pictures dotted the walls and a newspaper sat strewn on a round dining table, along with scissors and a fresh stack of cut coupons.

“If you mess up my system over there, we’re going to have a problem,” she pointed out as he dropped into one of the chairs.

His hands came up immediately, fingers splayed and palms facing her in mock surrender. “I remember the drill. Don’t get in the middle of Ana’s things when she’s on the warpath for good bargains.”

A laugh bubbled out of Ana, loud and bright. “Do you remember when I dragged you out for Black Friday?”

“God, don’t remind me,” groaned Jack, sinking deeper into his seat. “You _punched_ a man over a flat screen.”

“Talk shit, get hit — asking me where my burka is right after cutting me in line. Asshole.”

It hadn’t been funny in the moment. Jack remembered very visibly jerking forward to deal with the guy — whether to verbally spar with him or send him on his way -- but then Ana had flattened him on his ass. “You remember his face? He started crying. Christ.”

Ana threw him a broad grin from her place in the kitchen, where she was pulling out mismatching tea cups. “And the workers started yelling -”

“- that they were going to call the police -”

“- and you yelled _I_ am _the police_ and flashed your badge!”

While Ana broke out into fresh peels of laughter over how utterly cringe-worthy it was, Jack dragged his hands over his face, digging the heel of his palms into his eyes to block out the memory. It had been so funny that once they fled the store, they lost it again until Ana was slapping Jack to shut up so she could find a bathroom before she wet herself in a Best Buy parking lot.

They came back here in the morning when all the shopping was done. Kofi Aromo cups and shopping bags in hand, they burst into the living room ready to regale them with the story about Ana’s right hook, only to find the kids snoring soundly out alongside Gabe -

The sheer thought of _him_ was ice water over the top of his head. It choked the breath from him, and at once Jack squeezed his hands, shuttered his expression, and tried to force away the memory.

“Hey. _Hey_ ,” Ana called quietly, setting the fresh cup before him. Her hand, warmed from the kettle, gripped his wrist gently until the tension flooded out of him again. “None of that, Jack. You look like you’re going to bolt right out of my door and I’ll never see you again.”

When she let go, Jack brought the side of his thumb to his eyes to quickly wipe free any unshed tears. The last thing he wanted was another breakdown in Ana’s kitchen; he’d had far too many of those for his own liking. “I’m good. I am. I just try not to think about all of it.”

“That shit turns to cancer,” Ana said as she dropped into the chair across from him. Both her hands cupped the white china in her hand, obscuring half of the Arabic writing on it. Anyone else might have thought it said something tragic and beautiful; knowing Ana, Jack figured it was an artful expression to go fuck yourself. “Is that what this is about, then? You dropped off the map so you wouldn’t have to think about _him_?”

“No,” he answered quickly — so much so that he knew it sounded like the lie it was. “I just needed time to think. To figure it all out.”

“And what did you figure out?”

The sharpness of that question wouldn’t normally have him shuddering out a ragged breath. He didn’t need or expect Ana to coddle him; they hadn’t become friends because he was _delicate_ . But faced with that bluntness -- what _did_ he figure out? -- Jack could only look down at his hands and try to force himself calm.

They were shaking, so he looked elsewhere — to the vase on the counter, to the pictures on the wall, to the newspaper headlines next to him. The boldest asked _TERROR ATTACK ON LA MADRIGUERA?_ In the narrow column beside it flashed the picture of a middle aged cop with a familiar face: _VETERAN OF THE FORCE KILLED IN HIT AND RUN_.  _Detective Sebastien Levesque was killed Thursday evening when -_

“Jack,” Ana called, this time with a tenderness she reserved for Fareeha.

“I think I should have walked away from the job,” he rasped out. “I should have asked him to move. I should have figured it out, what was pushing him — why he’d go that route. It’s my fault -”

“Hey, hey, no. _Jack_.” Ana set her teacup down, rising in one moment to sit beside Jack in the next. Her hands hauled his away from the table and brought them to her lap. “Who do you think you’re talking to here? Do you think you’re the only one who has lost someone and felt guilty for not doing enough?”

His brow furrowed at that and his gaze dropped lower. Of all people, she _would_ know, and the knowledge that he had willfully taken off from her life when she had already endured something similar was shameful.

 _That’s right — that’s right, _ came _his_ voice unbidden. _Take off because you think you don’t need me anymore, because you think you’re_ better _than me. Jack Morrison, ladies and gentlemen, blind to any bullshit that doesn’t get in his way._

“I’m sorry — I don’t know why I’m like this. Why I’m so fucking wrapped up in myself — of course you knew what I was going through. God, I just couldn’t… ”

And _fuck_ , he was crying. No wonder he had disappeared from everyone in his life — he couldn’t bear to be in the same room with any of them without breaking down this pathetically. Jack pulled his hands hastily away from Ana’s and wiped at his face, hoping to bring back some measure of control in his bones.

For her part, Ana leaned back in the chair and sighed tersely. “You didn’t make his decision; he did. You had nothing to do with what he did at the end,” _of his life_ , she didn’t finish. The words still hung precariously in the air. “It doesn’t matter if you think you could have worked it out, if you picture a life where you two moved to New York City and got some shitty apartment and shitty nine to five jobs. Thinking like that will _kill_ you. That isn’t just bullshit about my husband from seven years ago, Jack. That’s real. That’s my reality, too.”

Her words almost slid past him. They felt distant when the haze of Gabriel lingered at the forefront of his mind. Swallowing past the lump in his throat, he nodded her way and asked, “Something happen?”

Ana’s brow furrowed, but the look in her eyes had softened dramatically. “Jesse.”

“What about him? Is he alright?”

“I wish I knew.” The off-hand answer might have convinced anyone else — she even tried to release a breathy laugh with it, but the helpless shrug of her shoulders and the way her fingers tried to card through her messy up-do spoke volumes. “He took off. I always knew it was a possibility that he’d leave once he was old enough. A lot of foster kids do that — but he was happy here. At least for a time, he was happy. But when you and Gabe … well, Gabe stopped coming around and I think Jesse took that personally. You know how he looked up to him -- I didn’t know if it was hero worship or just his desperate need for some kind of father figure. Anyway, Jesse started to withdraw from everything. I thought he might have been using again… He took his death hard, Jack. Really hard, and… ”

Stillness settled into Jack little by little — growing over him like high tide on the Californian shore. People spoke about the feeling of alarm like it was a razor at your gut, or a siren screaming in your ear. In his experience, it was a queer feeling hard to describe and impossible to emulate. It was what had Ana looking like she had been pulled into some strange camera focus, looking close and far away all at once. It felt _cold_ , not hot or clammy: a chill settled into the line of his shoulders and left them feeling hollowed out. The tips of his fingers and toes tingled like he needed to flex and move, but couldn’t bring himself to do so.

It felt keenly like a trance. The room felt darker and quieter — drowning out Ana’s words until she, too, faded from sight. It was the charred, mutilated form of an unidentified woman that took her place.

 _YOU_ _OWE_ _HIM AFTER YOUR JANE DOE CASE_.

His gasp was a silent drawn breath, but still Ana took notice.

“Jack?”

“When’d you last see him?”

Ana had collected her hair over her shoulder at some point and was twisting it into a braid. Her hands slowed to a stop at the question. “Nine months ago. He would sleep here on and off, as much as I tried to get him to stay. Said he was going to crash at his friends’ places -- I knew what kind of friends he meant. So I sat him down, I begged him to let me help. I begged him to _talk_ to me. He said he would when he returned from work, but…”

Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “You see? You’re not the only one that knows about making the wrong decision. I should have kept him home.”

She was made of tougher stuff than anyone he knew, but still Jack could see the way her fingers fumbled with the braid so that she had to start over anew.

“Ana. Jesse loves you, he loves _Fareeha_. If he’s fallen in with the wrong crowd, I can help you sort this out.”

“I don’t know what you could do at this point. I’ve gone to every possible contact he had — went through his phone bill, reached out to people, contacted the police more times than I can count, but who cares about someone going missing at twenty-two? Half of them think it’s a miracle he stayed past eighteen, the other half think I’m _lucky_ to be rid of him. I would have contacted you, but…”

“I quit the force,” Jack supplied quietly.

“ _And_ you disappeared months before he did. _Idiot_. Do you know what that does to a woman, having everyone leave her like that? You, Gabe, Jesse. I would have lost my mind if not for Fareeha and Reinhardt.”

“ _Wilhelm_?”

“The very same,” Ana supplied, standing up from her chair as she bundled the hair tie around the end of the braid. There was something artless about the way she ignored his gaping, going instead about her business by picking up the cups of tea from the table.

“I thought you hated him.”

“I never said hate.”

“You said you’d rather shit a knife than give him your number.”

“Anyone ever say you have the memory of an elephant, Morrison? It’s a pain in the ass.”

Jack felt himself grinning wide again, and before he could dwell on it — the guilt of sitting here _alive_ , grinning with Ana like he used to -- he sprung to his feet and loped across the kitchen. “Where’d Jesse work? I’m not a real officer anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get answers — real answers.”

“Are you sure you’re really up to that?” Shutting off the faucet, Ana turned toward him and placed a hand on her hip.

“I owe you. You said it yourself — no one else gives a damn about another juvenile delinquent messing up. You were the only one in Gang Intervention willing to take on his case. They didn’t want to touch a kid involved with the Deadlock — hell, _I_ didn’t even want to deal with it.”

It had been Gabriel that had pushed and pushed Jack into figuring out some solution for the wayward sixteen year old. Where Jack had seen paperwork, Gabriel had seen potential and snatched him back from the brink. They spent the better half of a week pouring in time and endless energy into figuring out how Jesse could land anywhere but locked up, and when it had looked hopeless, Ana Amari picked up the phone down at county.

“But I want to do this now, you have to let me help.”

Ana rolled her eyes and sank back against the counter with a huff. “ _Only_ if you promise not to disappear on me for another year.”

“I promise. I swear.”

“Then, give me your number and I’ll give you mine.”

Jack frowned, remembering the burner he had tossed out the day before. “I lost my phone, actually — but I’m getting a new one. If you give me your number -”

Ana broke off into exasperated cursing and whirled around to dig through one of the smaller cabinet drawers. For someone so passionate about keeping her home spotless, her junk drawer was filled to the brim and ready to come off the track completely. Pen and post-it in hand, she quickly scrawled her number down and gestured for him to take it.

When it was firmly in his pocket, Ana took him by the wrist and drew him over to the wall of photos. The frames were mismatching and looked like they had been accumulated from Walmart bargain bins and last minute garage sales, but he supposed that was the charm in it. A rustic assorted collection as varying as the people in the photos.

“This is the last photo I have of him,” she pointed. “I know it’s blurry, but I took it on my phone and printed it at one of those kiosks.”

Jesse McCree was no longer the scrappy beanpole that he had once been. The photo was from a warm day at the beach, because he was lounging on his side on a towel and little Fareeha had poked her head into the frame. Jesse had always been long legged and broad shouldered, but he clearly filled out in recent years. The patchwork of tattoos that sleeved half his left arm had grown stretched out and distorted as he put on muscle. If Jack didn’t know any better, he would have thought him closer to thirty than twenty. The beard and the shaggy head of hair helped in that, too.

But Jack soon found his attention sliding away from the photo and over the maze of clashing frames. There was Ana, Fareeha and Jesse at a Disneyland, each sporting their own pair of mouse ears. Above that, Fareeha and Jesse in the backseat of a car, oblivious to the camera because they were discussing something together. Ana’s parents featured in, too, toasting with their wine glasses. Below that -

“Thanksgiving. It was a good day, yeah?”

Jack said nothing in reply, too focused on the photograph. They had set up a camera on a timer, with Jesse and Fareeha positioned on each side of the couch. Ana and Jack had stood behind them, leaning in and grinning wide. It was Gabriel that — after several failed attempts — readied the countdown and collapsed onto the couch in the center, with his arms wrapped around both kids. He wore a crooked smile, the kind Jack loved on him because it wasn’t forced.

It was the exact same smile that he’d thrown Jack’s way in the office, with his suit jacket tossed over his chair and his collar loosened. While Jack had discarded his gun holsters when they were trapped doing paperwork for hours on end, Gabriel had left his on like he might need it. He looked dangerous like that, even behind a desk with his attention firmly on whatever he was reading. There was an intensity to everything he did that Jack both envied and admired.

It was his own military experience at work. Gabriel had seen war long before Jack stepped foot in Iraq.

Spec Ops. Secret raids. Wet work. Gabriel never gave details, but Jack could put two and two together.

There had been a time early into their partnership down at Major Crimes where Jack found himself staring again. Night had long since fallen yet they had remained, long after everyone trailed home one by one. Gabriel’s desk lamp illuminated half his face, and across from him Jack could see the crease in his brow and the way his lips pulled down into a subtle frown when he was deep in thought.

Then, as if sensing his eyes, Gabriel had looked right up at him. _There a problem, Morrison?_

Excuses tumbled out of Jack so quickly he could barely understand what he was trying to say. He felt himself flushing and stammering painfully until Gabriel had let out a laugh. _Easy, boy scout. I’m just fucking with you_.

He smiled the same way he did in this photo, crooked and playful, with a softness in his eyes that hardened men shouldn’t have been capable of.

It really had been a good day.

 

* * *

 

According to Ana, _The Cellar_ had been Jesse’s last known stop, where he worked late night shifts doing anything from bartending to wrangling belligerent drunks right out the door. The place was best described as a complete train wreck. The floors were so torn up that one false step could send someone tripping onto their face, and the walls had been clearly painted black over and over again to clean up whatever was underneath. Jack guessed it was graffiti, because much of the bar itself was tagged to hell and back. Some spread to the walls, where people did everything from signing their names, to making poetic statements, and  — for the low brow — drawing dicks wherever space allowed.

A couple of booths lined the outside while two pool tables took up the center of the bar. The counter itself was pushed against the wall and lay beneath a buzzing fluorescent ceiling light.  Several of the stools in front of it completely lacked seats, rendering them nothing but short rusting poles sticking up into the air. Jack opted to stand when he made his way over.

The bartender, an aging man sporting long hair despite the bald spot at the crown of his head, took his time acknowledging him. The small television mounted upon the liquor shelf featured local news anchors covering their top stories. Footage of the smoke covered _La Madriguera_ played on repeat, with some of the footage even panning right over Sunset Sights. Then, the anchor cut to the next story. The same photo of Detective Sebastien Levesque hung in the corner of the screen by the pretty reporter; he couldn’t hear her words, but her shaking head and subtle frown gave him the gist of what was being said.

“Pig.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up as he brought his gaze back to the bartender, who finally turned to regard him. “Not a fan of the police?”

“Are you?” he shot back sharply. “‘Cause there’s the door if so. I don’t serve no cop and I don’t serve no cop kiss ass.”

With his forearms pressed against the counter, Jack leaned in and flashed a lopsided smile that he knew looked as insincere as it felt. The humor had bled dry from his voice; he sounded too rough, too sharp. “Do I look like a fuckin’ cop?”

The bartender swept his eyes over Jack and, after a moment of brief deliberation, eased back. “No -- but you don’t look like anyone I’ve seen around here before. And you got that glint in your eye.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like you think you’re a hot shot. Like you wanna be a good guy.”

Jack leaned back, and finally moved to take a proper seat on one of the functioning stools. “Trust me, Uncle Sam beat the good guy out of me years ago.”

“No shit? Where’d you serve?”

“Iraq.”

“Vietnam,” the bartender shot back, pushing up his sleeve to reveal a black and white inked helicopter on his bicep. Beneath that were four or five roughly scrawled names. “Lost my best friends out there.”

“I know something about that.” Jack’s attention drifted from the other man, settling instead on the wall that lay between the two shelves of liquor. Red, bleeding letters spelled out _THE CELLAR_ , but it was the insignia that hung above it that caught his attention. Some kind of red eyed skull had been stamped crookedly beside the text — clearly an afterthought.

“Alright, soldier. First one’s on the house, what’ll it be?”

“Whiskey sour, but I was hoping you could help me out with something first.”

The man tossed the rag in his hands over his shoulder and nodded for Jack to continue.

“My friend’s kid ran off -”

“Shit, buddy. I don’t keep track of runaways -”

“He _worked_ here. Jesse McCree.”

That caused him to pause in whatever he was about to fire off next. Glasses clinked together as he fetched the proper tumbler and liquor bottles. “Yeah, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told the lady that came around asking after him.

“Jesse was good at first, alright? Real good with everything, always on time, always willing to stay after to close up. Couple of months pass, he starts gettin’ not-so-reliable. Starts bringing in the kind of trouble I don’t need. Look, I’ve seen it all. I know what it looks like when someone’s using, and that kid was on all sorts of shit. I’m finally ready to fire him, and what happens? He comes in before his shift, tells me he’s _thankful_ for the opportunity but he’s gotta go. Says something like _the Devil doesn’t release you once he’s got you in his grip._ Some cryptic shit like that. And then he was gone. That’s all I know.”

Before Jack had the chance to press him for more, low feminine laughter bubbled up from one of the far booths. Whoever she was, he couldn’t see from the counter. She lounged crookedly in her seat, extending her long slender legs out toward the rest of the room. Even when she _did_ gather herself up to stand, the curtain of her black hair blocked her profile from view.

The bartender whistled low as she prowled leisurely to the door. “Hey baby, you walk yourself over here and I’ll give you all the liquor you want.”

Jack ignored him. There was something familiar about the woman that he couldn’t place. By the time she was out the alley side door, he was up and following her.

He didn’t get two steps out before meeting her face-to-face.

“Jack,” Amélie Lacroix purred, slumping against the alley’s brick wall. Los Angeles had done little to chase away her French lilt. 

While everything else was left awash in darkness, Amélie alone stood in the light of the electric sign flashing over the door. Neon played off her skin, casting it in an eerie purple glow that left her looking strange and otherworldly. The single _click_ of her lighter had his pulse jumping, but whether or not she noticed was beyond him.

Cigarette lit, she inhaled sharply before letting the smoke pass through the red of her lips. It seeped from her mouth, curling over her each word so distinctly that for a moment he imagined each letter spelled out in the haze of grey. “It’s been awhile.”

“Awhile,” he returned. “I see Gerard’s pension is treating you well.”

The clipped response had her lidded eyes sparkling with amusement. He tried not to set his jaw — tried and failed.

“All this time and you’ve still not let that go?”

“You killed him.”

“Allegedly,” Amélie drawled.

That much was true. Gerard Lacroix had been another detective working Major Crimes before his untimely death. Like something out of pulp fiction, he had been found dead in his bed with a knife wound in his chest. All signs pointed to his wife, who claimed to have found his body after a long day spent shopping across town. The crime scene was too clean and there had been no weapon in sight. Jack and Gabriel _knew_ the break-in was staged, but they lacked the evidence to charge Amélie. She had walked away free of everything but speculation, and even that didn’t seem to trip her up.

Gabriel used to say she must have seen _Basic Instinct_ one too many times. Jack just thought she was a well disguised sociopath.

“What are you doing here?” They could go back and forth about Gerard’s death all night, but standing in a quiet alley with a murderer and no gun on his person was the last thing he wanted to do.

“God, it _burns_ you, doesn’t it? Not having all the facts, wandering around in the dark like a little child. Did you actually think that man was going to give you any real answers?” The butt of her cigarette tapped against her lips; even so, he could see the smirk behind her fingers.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

Amélie was beautiful — all slender lines and sharp angles. She could make slouching against an alley wall look like a model shoot for a magazine, and when she tipped her head back to laugh, it _looked_ genuine.

But it lacked warmth. _She_ lacked warmth.

“Nothing. Everything.” Her heels clacked on the blacktop below as she straightened up. Between her sudden proximity and the spent cigarette that flew from her fingers, he was forced to draw back. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head over it, _boy scout_. We take care of our own.”

_Easy, boy scout. I’m just fucking with you._

She didn’t give him a chance to process it — _why_ she had Gabriel’s words in her mouth. By the time she was out the alleyway, a black car crawled up to the curb. He didn’t even get a parting look before she opened the back door and began to climb inside.

“Wait — Lacroix, who — _wait_! Amélie!” Jack _bolted_ forward  — got as far as the sidewalk, but then they were gone.

 

* * *

 

The sound of Jack Morrison’s voice should have been a relief, but Lena only felt sick. They had been friends once, when they had worked as beat cops. They even patrolled together for a few months while Lena was being switched around from partner to partner. While other senior officers were jaded and had come to hate the job, Jack’s passion had never waned. His enthusiasm mirrored hers, and before his promotion they seemed to enjoy each others company.

But that was years ago — long before she had come to learn how an officer could fall from grace and dirty their hands with the worst of the worst.

Brow furrowed, Lena sank deeper into her chair and tangled the black phone cord around her fingers. At the other end of the line, Jack made a compelling case; he was looking to get closure on Gabriel Reyes and on the Jane Doe case that had come years before: _Sunset Sights_.

“I know,” Lena whispered, painfully aware of each person that passed by her desk. “I _know_ this means a lot to you, but I could get in big trouble with this. _Big_ trouble.”

“ _I haven’t asked for a favor once from you, Lena. The name of Gabriel’s pathologist and some files about Sunset Sights. That’s all I’m looking for. A name and a couple of copies. I just want to see if there’s something I missed.”_

“Are you sure it’s not just going to open up an old wound? Sometimes things are best left dead and buried.”

“ _Lena_.”

She grimaced at the tangible pain in his voice. The problem wasn’t that she didn’t want to break one or two rules to give Jack some peace of mind.

“ _I'm not asking for the sun and the moon here. All you have to do is look it up.”_

The problem was that she had expected this call — and that she had the name of the pathologist ready to go since eight this morning.

“Okay. _Okay_ , I can give you the name of the pathologist, but the files will take some extra time.”

“ _Thank you. Really, this means -_ ”

“Angela Ziegler out of Memorial Hospital.”

She didn’t give him time to express his gratitude. The line went dead before Lena could stop herself, leaving her wondering whether or not she had done the right thing.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [ **D O S**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaMm7Zt4kS4)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr.](http://thewinterking.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> Special shout out to author _AlmaMeDuele_ and [Hang the Fool](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7127210/chapters/16186526) for inspiring me with the relationship between Ana and Jesse. I had never considered the dynamic those two might share before reading her work! If you are the last person on the planet to have read it, you should really check it out. She also helped me figure out what [brand](https://shoppingadviceforyou.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/pall-mall-cigarettes.jpg) of cigarettes Gabriel smokes in this fic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel watched his mouth like he couldn’t look away — brows knit, eyes creased in the corners. It was too open, too vulnerable. A man could get hurt like that, and here he was, charging out into enemy fire without a vest, without regard to his safety. Gabriel held him so steadfast that he seemed to think Jack wasn’t the one holding the gun in that scenario, like he wasn’t the one pulling the trigger. He could pin Jack there all night, cage him with his body, shackle him with his hands, and it wouldn’t make any difference if his advances were rejected again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for internalized homophobia. and sex, if that isn't your thing.

 

 

**SEVEN YEARS AGO —  
**

 

 

The weatherman had been wrong — the storm system rolled right over Los Angeles instead of passing due south like predicted. A rumble of building-shaking thunder signaled its sudden presence; those gunmetal grey clouds weren’t just for show after all. Rain fell slowly at first, with fat droplets that _plinked_ soundly against every surface. Then, lightning streaked across the sky and the heavens opened on the city below.

The past few dry seasons had transformed the inconvenience of rain into a Californian luxury. While most scurried to their cars, some lingered with their palms outstretched and heads tilted back, artlessly bathing in it. Jack had no such poetic intentions as he palmed open the lobby door and spilled out onto the sidewalk.

He was thirty-one years old, a decorated veteran, and, as of eleven months ago, a detective within Major Crimes. By all accounts, Jack Morrison was the constructed American Dream: forged in the Heartland, tempered in the Middle East. When a Purple Heart for his troubles wasn’t enough, he returned home to combat crime-ridden Los Angeles. That was how he was seen — never as a man with his own ambitions, grappling with an impossible weight hoisted on his shoulders, but as a symbol of American greatness.

His parents had wanted a prop with good grades and a varsity jacket — something they could lean against so the neighbors knew how good his upbringing had been. The army had wanted a killer with a heart of gold and a pretty smile to match. The LAPD wanted a buffer, he knew that the moment he was promoted years before others in line.

After all, newspapers can sell feel good stories about junior detectives that served in Iraq; they might even print that instead of an exposé on departmental corruption.

Rain had him soaked in under a minute. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he had to get as far away from Gabriel’s apartment as quickly as possible. His lips felt swollen and slick with more than water. The urge to reach up and _touch_ had his fingers twitching unchecked; would others know that he had been kissed? Would they know who it was that kissed him?

Gabriel was a hardened man — all broad shoulders and long legs filled out with solid muscle that Jack envied. He wore scars on his cheek and carried lines at the corners of his brown eyes that spoke of experience. Telltale callouses lined his fingers, both from the pen he wrote with and the guns he carried. Tenderness did not seem a thing that came naturally, and yet -

Jack pressed his lips together and stopped at the corner of the nearest intersection. The crosswalk flashed a white figure urging him onward. He couldn’t. There was no lingering taste of Gabriel found on his mouth or tongue, but still Jack found himself remembering how plush his lips had been, how warmly they had slotted over his, and how even with the scrape of his beard, the entire thing had been easy.

Too easy.

Nothing in his life came without a price someone was bound to collect on.

What would be Gabriel’s price, Jack wondered dimly. On cue, the crosswalk blinked to a red warning sign and counted down from twenty. Cars turned right through the intersection, their bald California tires taking the corner slow like they might spin out on the slick road; it was a feeling he empathized with.

The beeping sign read off _…_ _ten… nine… eight…_ and Jack knew it was now or never: cross the street, go home, and forget about the way Gabriel Reyes sighed into his mouth with longing that ached to hear.

But one step forward and Jack knew he’d be navigating blind, spinning out of control, bound to crash hard into the first surface that caught him. The memory of Iraq and the sea of twisted Humvee husks swam to the forefront of his mind. In an instant, the bright sky of the desert had gone black with smoke; the only light seemed to come from flames that cut through the abyss. Against all odds, Jack had avoided collision and chaos, but a hard right sent the vehicle careening until it toppled over and over.

_Five… four… three…_

Faced with the options, there never really was a choice. Jack sank backwards, retracing step after step until he finally turned around. The more it rained, the more the streets cleared. By the time he made his way back into the high rise he was sopping wet, his shoulders hunched and head dipped low. People stared; he could feel their eyes all the way to the elevators, but blessedly none sought to share with him.

At Gabriel’s door, his knock came hesitant and light — like he hoped the other man wouldn’t hear and that would be the end of it. Seconds passed, and just when he was pushing a hand back through his blonde hair with resignation, the lock rattled and the knob twisted.

He didn’t know how he expected to find Gabriel ten minutes after fleeing his apartment at the first sign of intimacy — perhaps in some equal disheveled state that made Jack feel better about his own. Perhaps even with wide eyes and a look of relief that he’d come back in the end. It would be easy to smooth this out with a laugh and an explanation (and though he knew he couldn't summon one, not when his chest was a tangled knot of emotions without name, he found himself desperate for a reprieve that eased his shame).

It never came. Gabriel’s open affection had long since fled. A cool mask of neutrality now replaced it — a look often reserved for interrogating guilty perpetrators. With one hand braced on the door and the other on the frame, his body stood as a makeshift wall, blocking Jack from any entrance into the apartment.

Humiliation threatened to engulf him. Even rain soaked with the air conditioning running in the hall, his disgrace was a sweltering, hot thing at the pit of his stomach. This was a mistake, this was a mistake, this was a -

“What do you want, Jack?” Gabriel asked, his steady voice betraying little.

No matter how hard Jack tried, he couldn’t look at him. His eyes skated along the corner of the door frame, then sank past and fell down. Even his hands failed to preserve his dignity; Jack clenched at the edges of his cheap suit jacket, telling himself that he was smoothing out the waterlogged wrinkles even if he was doing anything but.  “I just needed to apologize,” he answered tightly.

Gabriel gave no hesitation, no consideration. “Apology accepted.”

It was a curt dismissal if he’d ever heard one — the type of clipped response that only former military officers like Reyes could emulate without falter. If he didn’t know him so well, if he didn’t know how the other shut down when faced with any kind of dilemma outside his control, Jack wouldn’t have known to surge forward in that very moment. The door was already swinging shut when he lunged, and it was his jammed foot that ultimately stopped it from closing altogether.

When he pushed with a palm flattened against it, Gabriel held firm — like he had every intention of shutting the door on his face and carrying on with the rest of his day.

“I’ve never done this before,” tumbled out of Jack breathlessly. “You think this is easy for me? My partner kisses me and then what? We go back to work like nothing happened? You put in for a new rookie and you start this fucked up courtship all over again? Christ, Reyes, is this a game... ?”

“It was a mistake,” Gabriel cut in, and while he did not raise his voice, he had no need to. His tone carried the same kind of icy finality used around the office when he wanted to shut down an argument. It usually worked.

Jack was the exception. He made himself the exception; when others turned tail at the first sign of Gabriel’s mounting temper, Jack met it head on. There was a thrill in challenging and being challenged — the tallies between them had long been thrown out the window, and what they played for now was beyond him.

“Bullshit. _Bullshit_ , I know you. Try that on anyone else, but don’t act for a second like I don’t know you. You want me to think this was a happy accident, ending up here today?”

The door opened, but Gabriel’s fury did not descend as much as he dared to provoke it. He sidestepped with care, moving out of the way for Jack to enter, and closed the it without bothering to turn. “It’s not.”

“Not _what_?” Jack demanded.

The strong line of Gabriel’s back shuddered as he exhaled a ragged sigh, muscles shifting under the deep red of his collared shirt. The tie around his neck had disappeared in the minutes Jack had gone, but the rest of him was still intact. Whole, but changed. He a conundrum — a puzzle of jagged pieces that moved unbidden on their own. Just when you started to see the picture, a new image began to take shape

“Not what?” Jack pressed again, feeling savage and strung out with nothing but Gabriel’s back to look at. “You spend the last eleven months reminding me that I’m only where I am because of the way I look, because I got _lucky_ sixty miles outside of Baghdad, because I’m a good kiss-ass to the Captain. Eleven months of that shit.”

“That’s not -”

“Don’t. God, what the fuck am I even _doing_ here? Do you even — is this some kind of runnin’ bet around the office — who can humiliate Morrison the quickest?” It was a throwaway comment bitten out to wound Gabriel, but the second left him, a wave of alarm hit. He knew he was a divisive topic around Major Crimes; he had been an equally divisive figure his entire life.

The second someone lofted you on any kind of pedestal, they slapped a target on your back. There were other people with passing test scores gunning for the rank of detective in Major Crimes, and yet it had been Jack who was elevated to the role. He knew it, Gabriel knew it, and the entire office did, too.

His throat went tight. He had to leave, now. “Move.”

Gabriel’s silent back continued to answer him. The lack of response was kindling thrown on the flames of his panic.

“Fuck you, Reyes. _Fuck you_ for all of this — move  let me go -”

The other man might have been big enough to stand like a blockade, but Jack wasn’t helpless. One wet hand wrapped around his bicep and twisted to shove him around —

— but that was as far as he got.

It happened very quick, the way Gabriel turned to grab him. There were little memories strewn throughout their eleven months together that told Jack about where he’d come from. Gabriel said he was a veteran, said he had served for a handful of years, but there were things you didn’t just pick up from a couple of seminars with your unit. He was an exceptional shot, efficient to the point of cruelty in hand-to-hand combat, and a brilliant read on the person sitting across from him. It shouldn’t have surprised Jack when he was grabbed bodily by the throat, but then there was no time to react.

One moment he was behind him, digging his fingers into his arm, and the next his back hit the door so hard and high that his toes were left holding the bulk of his weight. Jack’s own hands came up to clasp around Gabriel’s, desperate to pry it away, but it didn’t budge. The pressure around his throat tightened so swiftly that Jack had no choice but to cease struggling or cut off the rest of his air flow.

Bright blue eyes dragged up to meet Gabriel’s. He expected rage to match the violence — a thunderous expression mirroring the storm raging outside. Jack shivered, and not for any chill to his skin.

Gabriel watched his mouth like he couldn’t look away — brows knit, eyes creased in the corners. It was too open, too _vulnerable._ A man could get hurt like that, and here he was, charging out into enemy fire without a vest, without regard to his safety. Gabriel held him so steadfast that he seemed to think Jack wasn’t the one holding the gun in that scenario, like he wasn’t the one pulling the trigger. He could pin Jack there all night, cage him with his body, shackle him with his hands, and it wouldn’t make any difference if his advances were rejected again.

The realization broke over them one at a time.

Gabriel gave a minuscule nod and unclenched his fist, leaving Jack flat on his feet. Air flooded his lungs in shallow gasps, pulled in through pale lips. The ruddy color Gabriel had kissed into his mouth had long since fled — chased away by cool rain water and biting wind.

It was strange to feel both his proximity and absence; heat bloomed from where Gabriel’s fingers lingered along his neck, yet the rest of Jack felt as stone. His arms hung uselessly at his sides, though no matter how much he willed life into them, they would not move, nor seek, nor touch. All he could do was tilt his head back, shutter his eyes, and wait for the other to withdraw and send him on his way.

Calloused fingertips danced along the column of his throat, sinking and tracing. His blunt nails could have raked harshly until they drew blood and Jack would have given him that, but pain never followed. In some way, tenderness was worse than the strangling hold from mere seconds ago — his chest ached with the staccato rhythm of his heart.

And still Gabriel did not relent, even when he had finished mapping the bruising palm print forming on his skin. Those warm hands dragged down to his shoulders: a silent bid for attention. Jack refused, keeping his head craned up and his bare fingers scrabbling at the smooth surface of the door.

If this was a joke — if this was about humiliation —

“Jack.” Gabriel uttered his name like a sigh against the line of his jaw, and with a soft rustle of fabric he was closer than before. Heat poured from him but it only served to make Jack shudder — as though the cold had seeped far past his skin and settled somewhere in his bones. Up and up Gabriel’s hands traveled, brushing away rainwater, smoothing against the set of his jaw, stilling only when he had bracketed his face. “Jackie. Look at me.”

He couldn’t. When his eyes opened, they skated past the top of Gabriel’s dark hair. “Tell me it’s not some fucked up game — I swear to god, Gabe —”

“It’s not a game.” The first kiss was little more than the brush of his beard against his cheek.

“It’s not a bet.” The next found its mark on the corner of his mouth — bolder, warmer.

“... and you’re not here for any other reason than me wanting you here.” Gabriel’s fingers carded through his blonde hair, guiding him into the kiss this time. The one before — when Jack rushed from the apartment — began as a chaste, testing thing. Gabriel had kept his hands to himself, leaning far into Jack’s stilted space until he met his mouth.

This one left nothing to chance. A twisting pull on Jack’s hair had him gasping in pain -- a cruel tactic exploited and soothed by the velvet of Gabriel’s tongue. He tasted like smoke and the rich tang of tobacco, just like Jack had imagined each time he’d lit up. Rough fingers around a cigarette, rough fingers in his hair.

Jack broke first, dipping his head back to catch his breath. Gabriel’s grip untangled at once, replacing the vice-like grip with a coddling pat instead. The gesture was so sudden, so stilted, Jack knew it was meant to abate. One look at the older man confirmed his suspicions: there was too much wariness in the fine lines of his face, too much tension in the broad width of his shoulders.

Jack swiped his tongue low over his lip absentmindedly. “You think I’m delicate.”

“I think you’re going to run out of here at any moment.” Gabriel hadn’t moved; he stood poised with the promise of action.

“Give me a reason to stay.”

“I’ve given you dozens.”

“Then _make_ me stay.”

The words were a tilt-shift on the room.  Amusement vanished from Gabriel’s eyes as quick as a candle snuffed out, and in its dark wake grew something else entirely. It should have been alarming, the way the right combination of words could strike such a change in the man, but Jack only felt a curl of deep satisfaction.

 _He_ did that. He could catch the frayed edge of Gabriel’s careful mask and peel it back when no one else could. Whatever ugly and distorted thing lying beneath was his alone to glimpse. Jack’s mouth curled as he drew back, knocking his shoulder blades soundly against the door.

“Who’s playing games now?” Gabriel asked quietly.

“I’m playing for keeps.”

Despite their equal height, the man knew how to use every last centimeter he had over Jack. He was bigger, stronger, with more training under his belt. Close quarters meant checkmate, and Jack had no intention of being pinned there again when the rules had been rewritten.

“Dangerous,” Gabriel chided. His level voice betrayed the glint in his eyes.

Gone was his stilted hesitance, his wary longing and tender touch. The attack came a heartbeat later with a lunge meant to end this before it began.

Half a second too slow and Jack would have been slammed back. He was quicker than the two of them though, and wasted no time trying to duck, twist, and bolt. A few steps past the other were all he managed, and then his momentum was halted by an ironclad grip around his arm. Gabriel’s sharp tug threatened to send him crashing, but Jack had the sense of this dance now. All of it. The soothing touches, the heated kisses, the way he waited to touch each time — waiting for permission —

Jack staggered as he was hauled back. It looked like an easy victory for Gabriel, because he tried to drag him with little thought to his other limbs. He didn’t count on Jack stopping his forward pursuit and twisting with the motion. By the time he spotted his fist swinging into view, it was too late. The punch landed so hard Gabriel careened to the side, and though he held tight to Jack’s soaked jacket, it was easy enough to slip out of.

He didn’t wait for Gabriel to pick himself up. Pushing his still-damp hair from his face, Jack tore free the blue tie, shucked his shirt, and bent mid-step to slide off socks and shoes. The belt was next, completing a trail of strewn clothes all the way to the bedroom door.

Jack gave the room a spare glance. It was sleek and spartan, much like Gabriel kept his work desk. Beyond that, he couldn’t bring himself to care — not when he turned to find the man himself propped up on one hand, and nursing his cheek with the other.

The fight and fall had disheveled his hair, leaving a few stray curls hanging against his sweat-slick forehead. The deep knit of his brows creased his skin — but it was his eyes that captivated. Though the rain had let up in increments, Gabriel’s mid-afternoon apartment was still cast in a blue-grey haze. No lights were on, nothing to reflect back in the other man’s gaze, and still Jack knew how wide his pupils were blown.

He licked his lips and thought of the smoke on Gabriel’s tongue, and how it had tasted in his own mouth.

“You gonna stop with the fragile shit?” he asked after a beat, popping open the first button of his slacks. Confidence came easy from a distance, where he could pretend that his own frayed nerves hadn’t sent their late afternoon on a collision course. He could stand there relishing his throbbing knuckles and work down the zipper, but —

Gabriel had just drawn himself to his feet and —

one touch to the metal fly had him hissing through his teeth. When had he become so hard? The graze was no more than brush of his fingers -- quick and thoughtless, a match strike against a surface — but under the weight of Gabriel’s gaze, his groin twitched into the contact. Warmth didn’t just pool in the low of him, it surged electric hot until he forgot he once felt cold.

A dark bruise was already taking shape high along Gabriel’s cheekbone, right under the old scars. The mark flushed darkly, and while the other man gave it a last fleeting thought with the brush of his knuckles, his hand soon dropped to the cuffs of his blood red shirt.

His clothes joined the trail to the bedroom — not at the nervous, triumphant speed of Jack, but at a pointed prowl. Cufflinks clattered noisily as they were thrown aside. Buttons opened without care, and the shirt slid from his shoulders without struggle. “You’re out of your depth.”

“I think I just proved I’m not,” Jack fired back. His voice was too throaty to sound confident.

The other man bent to pull off his shoes and socks next, but where Jack had kept his slacks on, Gabriel didn’t bother. There was no shame or show in it — the metal buckle of his belt clacked, fabric rustled, and then he was starting forward again, right through the threshold of the bedroom.

Jack’s mouth went dry. His courage had gone; his _want_ skyrocketed.

Gabriel looked like he hadn’t been a day out of the military, let alone seven years. Every lingering thought about what he might look like beneath the suits went right out the window. Where Jack had expected undefined but still very present muscle — the mark of a soldier long from the field -- he only found hard lines.

There wasn’t a superfluous inch on Gabriel: wide shoulders, strong arms, and thick pectorals that tapered into a more narrow waist. Even the striking cut of muscle along his legs was worthy of attention, but the second he dipped his eyes down, Jack’s breath strangled in his throat.

Gabriel was hard, and like the rest of him, _thick_ —

“Sit down.”

He didn’t move.

“On the bed, Jack.”

His pulse roared in his ears and his chest, when he finally remembered to _breathe_ , heaved like he was drowning. Part of him dropped onto the edge of the bed because he didn’t think he could stand there any longer — not with Gabriel looking at him like that. Clammy palms squeezed the edge of the duvet tight. “Don’t fuckin’ say whatever you’re about to say,” he warned.

If Gabriel laughed at him — if he said something _stupid_ — His pride was already in tatters; he couldn’t take the other man mocking him.

No sharp quip came, no sneering laugh. Gabriel drew close, slotting himself right between Jack’s legs. The fight-or-flight response was a hell of a thing, and the second Jack thought Gabriel intended to take what he wanted, his hands drew up to grapple bodily and bruisingly with Reyes.

Only the chance never came. Gabriel sank down onto his knees one at a time, catching Jack’s hands on his descent, like they weren’t poised for violence.

“What're you —”

Gabriel pressed Jack’s palms down into the bed, gripping tight enough that the nonverbal was clear: _keep them there._ Then, he was reaching for the long abandoned zipper of his slacks, drawing it down and open.

“You were right,” Gabriel rumbled out softly, hooking the bands of Jack's underwear and pants around his thumbs. Dark eyes raised to meet blue. “You’re not completely over your head.”

There was no chance to lift up; Gabriel pulled the rest of the clothing free, jerking him with the motion. After, it was simply sliding them off leg by leg.

“Not wholly fragile.”

They danced around each other the entire night, kissing, pushing, and running away again. Even when Gabriel grew bold enough to touch him, he remained firmly above the shoulders, never straying, never escalating. Maybe that was the point — all of it leading up to this very moment — because when Gabriel’s coarse fingers wrapped around Jack’s cock, a noise tore from his throat, too sharp, too high, and too much like a whine.

“Not when you’re in the right hands, at least.”

Embarrassment curled low in Jack. A calloused thumb working slow circles against his slit was all it took to reduce him into a panting mess. He wasn’t even being pumped in his grip — like the other man didn’t care about making him come. Elbows bent, bowing him back uncomfortably. He wanted to reach, touch, grip, but his palms stayed where Gabriel had placed them.

A laugh, hot and breathy, gusted right up against him. “You’re getting so wet. Look.”

Jack shook his head _no_ , digging his nails deeper into the plush comforter. He couldn’t strip his eyes away from the window and the grey haze bleeding through the gossamer curtains, because if he did, that meant this was real, and what if —

“ _Look_.”

The single word was a growl, foreign to Gabriel’s naturally low and steady voice. It sounded so _unlike_ him that shock had Jack obeying despite himself, as though he expected to find something else kneeling in his wake.

But nothing was remiss, and any doubt died at the sight before him. The other man was right — his cock was leaking an embarrassing mess of pre-come. It coated his fingers and ran down his shaft, right to the thatch of darker blonde hair beneath. Attention held, Gabriel finally pumped his tight hold over his dick — using it, all of it, to keep him slick.

“Fuck,” Jack rasped, scrabbling at the duvet. “Gabe —”

The idea of this should have been humiliating. There wasn’t a scenario he pictured with Gabriel that didn’t leave him feeling flushed and ashamed. Every single fantasy, no matter their start, ended with a haze of pain and the other man’s disrespect. Each time Jack had tried to bury the thought, and each time it regrew again and again.

None of his idle dreaming put Gabriel on his knees, stroking and savoring the weight of him in his palm.

“You kept your hands there this whole time.” Gabriel wasn’t looking up at him anymore; his eyes had shifted down to Jack’s white knuckled grip on the edge of the bed. The observation had him flinching and releasing the covers at once. “Was that for me?”

“Shut up.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Gabriel’s hand left him and the sudden loss had him bucking up for the contact.

“Do you like pleasing me, Jack? Is that why you turned all the way around in pouring rain to come back here? Is that why you hit me — so I’d know you weren’t delicate?” The questions were poised soft enough to disguise any edge of pride, but Jack knew him. He could level his voice, but standing, he couldn’t hide the subtle tilt of his head nor the self-sure angle of his hips.

It left Jack feeling overheated and annoyed. There was nothing restraining him; he could have easily finished what Gabe started just to spite him. His palms dragged against the bed consideringly, once then twice, but in the end he didn’t _want_ to.

“Fuck you,” he settled for, feeling his cheeks grow hot.

Gabriel hummed, then hooked the width of his palm under Jack’s jaw. The _wetness_ of it, the scent of his own come, and the brazen touch should have made him balk. Maybe it was meant to, because Gabriel parted his lips to speak, only to stop cold when Jack choked out a groan.

Shock was a good look on him. It left Gabriel’s expression open — his eyes wide and brows hiked toward the mess of his hair. Even his breathing drew more rapidly with the subtle rise and fall of his chest. Silenced stretched between them; seconds of flared nostrils, locked eyes, and a thumb smearing over Jack’s lip in some pattern he couldn’t decode.

Gabriel nodded, once to himself then again to the both of them. “I want you to lie back.”

That he did balk at. Jack twisted his head, pulling himself from Gabriel’s grip. Alarm had him sliding backwards, ready to bolt at the first sign of an advance. “You —”

“I’m not going to fuck you.”

Whatever scathing protest he’d prepared died on his lips.

Gabriel pressed forward, seizing on Jack’s retreat. His fingers skated across the top of the covers, a feather-light touch far from bracketing the other man’s body. There was room and time to push him off — one nudge and he’d be on the floor.

But Jack didn’t — not when the bed dipped, not when the others weight rendered him captive. Pinned. Gabriel lay wedged between his spread thighs, sinking down until his elbows caged the blonde’s head. Lips met his jaw, ghosting a kiss.

“I’m not going to fuck you," he said again, this time more coaxingly than the last.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe him; this — splayed, spread, pliant — was too much a mimicry to the real thing. Old anxieties threatened to roar to life, ones he was desperate to keep silent. Jack’s heels sank into the bed, skidding without purchase, leaving his bent knees tight against Gabriel’s hips. One rutting twist up and _oh_.

The slide of Gabe’s cock against his was imperfect and sloppy. The jut of their hips knocked crudely, and Jack could only control so much at this angle. But it still had his nerves sparking white hot, like a live wire had been cut and forced all the heat in him south.  His hands wrapped tight around the span of Gabriel’s shoulders now, the clutch of his fingers a bruising hold.

A huffing breath warmed his cheek.

Gabriel was _laughing_. Before Jack could even snarl out an eloquent _fuck off_ , the other man ground down into him and robbed him of breath.

“ _God_ —”

“You’d like that though, wouldn’t you?” There was an _earnest_ note in Gabriel’s voice that mirrored his pace. Lazy gyrations turned into a pointed snap of his hips, and Jack could imagine it — how he’d look fucking someone, whole body in tandem, giving and giving until his control cracked —

“Tell me,” Gabe urged throatily.

He barely trusted his voice, not when Gabriel was smearing kisses against his jaw and shifting his weight. Jack felt a grappling hand dip down his side, clench his hip tight, then release to palm his thigh. Smearing, sliding, grasping without rhythm or end. It was like he didn’t know where to hold him, like he couldn’t get enough.

“Yeah,” Jack breathed. Here in the quiet of his apartment, somewhere between this hazy dream and reality, he could give him the truth. Shame seemed so far away under Gabriel’s fervent mouth. “I’ve thought about it — us —”

Gabriel’s groan shot straight to his dick. “Being under me, worked open with my fingers? Yeah, Jackie… see the way you look at me, knew you wanted it. Knew you.”

The friction was almost too much; it crawled close to pain, but did nothing to chase away the scorch and pressure. Jack’s head bowed back, his eyes screwed shut, and his nails sank hard enough to draw blood. Like he could hold on a little longer.

Like he could dig deep and carve out some place in Gabriel to make his own.

“You’ll look so good split open on my cock, baby —”

That was it. That was all it took — a couple of crude words, the affection, the promise of more.  Spine arched, hips rolling frantic and uneven, Jack came so suddenly it all but slammed into him. No warning build, no telltale crescendo that marked the last step over the edge. Just this searing bliss, leaving him twisting and spun out, bound to crash if not for Gabriel’s hands.

“Yeah, yeah, Jack…  just like that, give me it, I want it… “

There was a thought in that somewhere: that this marked the beginning of the end for Jack Morrison. That his life — and his soul — were now forfeit. The first kiss had signed his name on Gabriel’s dotted line, but this served as its consummation.

An unsettling chill swept over him in the wake of his orgasm, or maybe that was just Gabriel’s sudden absence. Jack sank bone-tired into the mattress, legs strewn and open, arms out to the side. The bed shifted, and Gabriel straddled his white streaked stomach now, one hand wrapped tight around himself to finish.

The closer he got, the more he curled over the blonde. Little hitched moans escaped him, almost mute over the sound of his quick, desperate pumping. Watching his composure shatter into pieces felt somehow both sacred and profane: a divine contradiction wrapped up in one man. He deserved to be worshiped, but at the foot of the very altar, Jack wrestled with shyness that had him hesitating.

Gabriel wasn’t looking at him. His face stayed downcast, too shadowed by something that approached trouble.

He had worn that same look right as Jack reeled back earlier, when he had blanched from his kiss as though it burned.

 _Doubt_ , Jack realized. _And rejection_.

His hands move with care at first, fingers trailing up the sides of his strong thighs. It was barely the promise of touch, and yet it had Gabriel’s pace faltering. His head lifted, his eyes found Jack’s. Shock was still a good look on him, so Jack grew bolder. Nails raked over the coarse hair of his legs, fingers traced the divots left by the crease of muscle, and when Gabriel was nearly whining — getting closer and closer — Jack rolled his palms over the jut of his hips.

Gabriel’s thick cock twitched in his fist when came, spilling in white ropes that shot across Jack’s chest and hit his chin. The humiliation didn’t flare this time; there was no room for it when watching Gabriel shudder and gasp. He came down from his climax in levels — still stroking until he couldn’t come anymore, only stopping when sensitivity had him hissing. Then he was touching Jack idly. The calloused pads of his fingers dragged through the mess along his chest thoughtlessly, and finally he moved from over him.

The mattress shook with his collapse at Jack’s side. He was on his back, eyes shut, chin tilted toward the ceiling. Whatever was racing through his mind, Jack realized it was best not to interrupt.

“I’m gonna get cleaned up,” he murmured, shifting to quietly stand.

“Yeah.”

The mirror spanned the wall of the bathroom, but Jack couldn’t settle his eyes on it. The shower was better than a bath rag, he reasoned, so he started the water and ignored his reflection. He was in and out quickly, leaving the bathroom with a towel wrapped modestly around his waist.

Gabriel had hardly moved; at some point he’d lit a cigarette, propped himself up against the pillows, and folded his arms over his chest, but his body language was otherwise the same.

It left Jack on uneven ground. His grip twisted into the ends of the towel anxiously, bunching it within his palm. “Did you… did you want me to go?”

“If that’s you asking me whether you can run out of here again without getting bullshit for it, there’s the door.” Two fingers, the cigarette clenched between them, gestured over to the door. A sign to go, a direction to flee, but also a gun.

“I don’t want to. Go, that is.”

Gabriel’s eyes cut to him, quick as a shot. Distrust was branded openly on his face, the longer Jack held his ground, the more it eased. When it had gone entirely, Gabriel nodded down to the bed in silent beckoning.

It felt too intimate — the act of pulling free the towel and climbing up next to him — but any second thought would lance tension straight between them.

Maybe the other man sensed this too, because he turned toward his nightstand and wordlessly handed Jack the lighter and pack.

The rain had entirely let up by the time they moved onto their second set of cigarettes. Light arced through the window, and at some point, Gabriel regained his boldness, slipping his arm under Jack’s head. It would have been more comfortable to pillow his head against the others chest, but this was easier. There was still no telling what _this_ even was between them.

Maybe tomorrow Gabriel would show up at his place.

Maybe tomorrow another would be here instead.

The thought turned smoke in his lungs acrid and shook a cough from him. Sitting up, Jack cleared his throat and reached once more for the carved tray laying precariously beside Gabriel’s hip. Hardly any ash had collected on the cherry of the cigarette, but it gave Jack something else to look at while he figured out the right combination of words.

It was Gabriel that spoke first. “You’re doing it again.”

“What’s that?”

“Thinking about the best method of escape.”

Jack let out a breathy, humorless laugh and sat back from the ashtray. “The opposite, actually. I was just considering if I hadn’t turned around. Would you have come after me?”

There were times Gabriel’s attention felt like a stone on his chest, weighing down until all the air expelled from his lungs. Saints and sinners alike shrank under that stare, and in that moment Jack didn’t know which he was.

“To the ends of the earth.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [ **T R E S**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k160Im-fcM)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr.](http://thewinterking.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you to [Motorghost](http://archiveofourown.org/users/motorghost/pseuds/motorghost) for beta reading this chapter. You should check out their excellent McHanzo work, Rōnin and the Nameless.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fill in that bingo card spot for toxic masculinity and genre typical violence.

 

Dr. Angela Ziegler was a Swiss national who worked Stateside for the past handful of years.  Prior to her arrival at Memorial Hospital (and Gabriel’s subsequent autopsy) her public records framed her as an elusive figure. Mercy Medical, located in the Bay Area, listed a woman of the same name on its website. The link was broken however, and no amount of tracing allowed Jack to determine _when_ she worked there. Another site gave an address in Sacramento; she had owned a home there some five years ago, but sold it ten months after its purchase. Before that, nothing.

Her web presence was lacking in a way he envied. While a dozen or so women appeared across the image search, only one lived in California. Either taken with a poor camera or badly uploaded, the fuzzy picture featured a trio of earnest doctors wearing lab coats. They leaned in but refrained from touching, leaving their body language stilted and awkward. Still, the blonde woman’s smiled vibrant and effortlessly. Clicking the photo brought him to the full site — another yet to be deleted page on Mercy Medical’s server.

 _From right-to-left,_ the broken HTML read, _Davor Babic, Hakeem Nejem, Angela Ziegler. Affectionately called Death Doctors while completing their fellowship at Mercy Medical, these forensic pathologists seek to bridge the gap between the criminal justice system and life saving medicine._

Even blurry, she was by all accounts an attractive woman — the type that morning shows across America lauded with praise for having looks _and_ a career. It seemed strange she wouldn’t have any social media to speak of: a Facebook account, an Instagram, a Twitter.

Nothing. Every single search brought him back to the start.

Even Memorial Hospital, with its lists of esteemed medical personnel and outreaching staff,  made no mention of the doctor on its website. The only evidence proving the tip wasn’t complete shit was a call to the front desk, right on the heels of his conversation with Lena. One _Doctor Angela Ziegler_ did indeed work out of Memorial, though she wasn’t scheduled to come in that day.

Disquiet gnawed at him.

The picture of Ziegler forming in his mind was that of non-person. He imagined instead a lure — the same kind that had thrown him right into Sunset Sights, watching the Pathfinder spark before it burst into flames. Knowledge of that experience told him to practice caution. Gather information. Watch Ziegler. Meet her anywhere but the hospital.

 _Easy._ Caution in the face of his reckless pursuit. A steady hand.

“Yeah, Gabe.”

On nights they found themselves wound tight around a case, they preferred the road to frustratingly blank office walls. They’d split the cost of gas, climb into Gabriel’s Camaro, and drive for hours, testing and unraveling theories that only made half sense.

An hour in, the game of whodunit around one particular double homicide turned into a quest to form the most outrageous conspiracy. _Scientologists staged it. They were collecting blood to revive L. Ron Hubbard,_ was one of Gabriel’s best. Jack fired back with _The angry ghost of Sharon Tate kills anyone with hair that resembles Charles Manson’s._

They drove far beyond the limits of Los Angeles, until light pollution and ozone burn gave way to stars and clean air. Somewhere between that, when the 405 became Interstate 5, Jack made himself a home out of Gabriel’s passenger seat. He no longer remembered how those nights ended. Only how they began.

 _Easy. You’re not in Iraq anymore, Morrison_.

“Sound advice.” No one knew his mind better than Gabriel. No one else knew where the blindspots lay.

It did nothing to abate. Gabriel was dead, and self preservation no longer concerned him.

 

* * *

 

Halloween night transformed Memorial Hospital into a mausoleum awoken. Decorations once aimed at casting holiday spirit in young visitors now hung in poor taste. Ghosts, skeletons and cobwebs lost their appeal when the emergency room was overflowing with costumed patients from a bad pile up on the I-5.

Even the lobby had turned into a temporary waiting room. One miniature Hulk chased around a bedazzled Hello Kitty while their pale mother looked on. Beside her, unaware that he looked ridiculous in his replica Beetlejuice costume, an angry man shouted into a phone about sensitive legal matters.

Jack navigated through the sea of impatient bodies: Marilyn Monroe shot him a dirty look for bumping into her, some Roman Emperor accused him of “cutting line” when he he had no idea if that was even possible in a hospital, and when he finally reached the lobby desk, a woman in pastel sugar skull makeup surged into his space.

“Watch it, _guero,_ ” she warned coolly. Jack opened his mouth to insist he wasn’t _cutting lines_ again, but the woman held up a hand, effectively cutting him off. Her long pink nails matched her Halloween wig exactly. “If you’re going to be rude to my new friend Joanne, we’re going to have a problem.”

It took Jack all of two seconds to surmise that _Joanne_ was the aging woman laughing breathlessly behind the desk. She sported a hairstyle more suited to previous decades, and wore a black vest with orange pumpkins and white ghosts across it. Though she smiled, her flushed face and watery eyes suggested she hadn’t been moments ago.

Which explained the Sugar Skull vigilante taking up her defense.

Jack shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets and gave a shrug of his shoulders. Impatience grated at his nerves, but so too did the saccharine remnants in his blood. No matter how hard he tried to scrub Indiana from his body language, speech, and manner, it only ever burrowed deeper.

Gone were the memories of the southern wind and its merciless winter whip. Dirt no longer stained the bottom of his nails from infinite field work. He knew — vaguely, distantly — what it was to push past stalks of wheat and sweet corn long after summer’s end. He could see it, knew he’d done it one thousand times over, but the memory failed to spark feeling in his fingertips.

Jack gave a minute pivot, yielding his full attention to the receptionist even as the Sugar Skull woman watched keenly. Joanne smiled, waiting hopefully for a kind look in return.

(He imagined opening a vein and willing every last drop of _Indiana_ out of his system. He thought of carving out the marrow of his bones and scratching clean every name etched there  — _Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel_ — until he was the hollow blank slate he longed to be.

Bitterly, he thought of the hollow, crumbling barn his bus drove past every morning on the way to school. In summer, the sea of green and wildflowers made it a distant speck on the flat horizon. In winter, the barren field served as a beckoning hand, guiding all eyes to look upon the long forgotten construct.

Frost bitten white and black rotten with mold. A half-caved in roof,  still stubbornly standing with nothing but spite holding up its walls.

Hell was cold and isolated. Hell was an endless winter and that dilapidated barn rooted at its center. Hell was Gabriel’s unseen ghost dwelling in those ruins.)

Jack gave her the type of practiced grin Midwest gentlemen were known for. “Had no intention of being rude, ma’am. Just needed some help finding my way around.”

Joanne’s face brightened and her hands smoothed down her vest with renewed earnest. “What can I help you with, then?”

“My friend works nights and she’s almost on her lunch. Angela Ziegler out of pathology. Thought I’d surprise her, but I don’t know where her department is?”

“You want me to call her up here?” Joanne offered as she picked up the phone.

Jack pulled his hand out of his pocket and reached to stop her. His smile faltered only once. “Ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?”

Beside him, the woman with a painted face and pink wig rolled her eyes dramatically. “Then, why are you wasting her time? Follow the directory and the signs, _culo_.”

Joanne gave an innocent shrug with the brandishing flare of her palms, clueless to the other woman’s insult. “They’ll take you where you need to go.”

His expression tightened as he uttered a single, “Thanks,” but it wasn’t until he turned away entirely that the smile dropped. Jack dragged his hand over his face, rough and slow.

Kindness was a foreign fit these days. Best to wipe free the excess before it found someplace to fester: the lines cornering his eyes, the nearly sunken quality of his cheeks from sliding underweight, or even in the fresh scar from _La Madriguera._

To their credit, finding the laboratory and pathology department proved simple enough. Three long hallways and an elevator ride later, Jack slipped into the quiet basement corridor marked by locked doors and the occasional locked window.  One carried a _Drop Off_ sign above it, reminiscent of a pharmacy. While the lights behind the window were dark, the tall rows of refrigerators were not: there was just enough vantage from the hall to see clear glass doors and the vials stored within.

Pathology lay just around the corner and down the next hall. On his way, one disgruntled technician paced past him without a second look. Another — a tall doctor wearing a wizard hat — asked him if he was lost.

“Just looking for Angela Ziegler. She’s a friend.”

“Shit,” the man answered lowly. “You’re her boyfriend?” He sounded disappointed.

“Just a friend,” Jack clarified. The truth worked in his favor. “Wanted to see if I could catch her before she takes her lunch.”

“Lunch? She’s not working the overnight shift. You’d better hurry up — she’s done for the night in about five and I’m already late to a meeting with a surgeon, so if you don’t mind…?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, stepping backwards to take his leave.

“Yeah, thanks.” Jack watched the other take off in a slow jog, then started in the direction he’d come from.

The pathology wing, as expected, was sequestered. A pair of unlocked doors led to an untouched waiting room; no one sat behind the high counter, enclosed entirely with glass. Going beyond that point required some kind of badge to scan, so Jack collapsed into one of the chairs, checked the clock for the time — 9:56 pm — and waited.

Three times the door swung open with doctors coming and going. They sent Jack furtive glances but waved off his lengthy explanation.

Angela Ziegler didn’t walk out until 10:08, wearing a powder blue hoodie over her scrubs and a bag strapped to her shoulder. Her body language carried the touches of someone deeply exhausted: inattentive focus, sagging spine, and hair sloppily falling from of a plastic clip. Even if she had seen better days, she was a perfect match to her picture.

Jack surged to stand and the movement sent Ziegler knocking awkwardly into the closing door. Her eyes met his, wide and alarmed.

The online photograph had been in black and white, but Jack had imagine her complexion less pale than it was now.

“Dr. Ziegler? I know this is unusual -”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she answered tightly. The door shut with a soft _click_ and her chest heaved with the sound. “I’m off. You’ll have to come back tomorrow?”

Swiss national. Her English was impeccable but the accent colored her words. The information had been accurate, at least.

“This will only take a minute,” he explained, but with a huff, Ziegler surged past him and out the opposite door.

Jack flew after her, hot on her heels. “I got your name from a report — you were the attending forensic pathologist on a case a year ago. Open and shut. No press. Ring any bells?”

For someone her height, she could take loping strides that forced Jack to keep his own pace brisk. “Too many to keep track.”

“Look,” he sighed, rounding the corner with her. “I’m not a reporter. I’m not trying to get you in trouble and I’m not trying to take up your time. I just need some peace of mind here.”

“All I do is determine the cause of death. It’s up to the county to sign off on it. If you think someone was wrongly killed or disagree with my findings, get a lawyer.”

The elevator pinged right as Ziegler slammed her fingers against the _up_ button. Doors opened and a single technician wandered out. The doctor surged in a half second later like her speed would deter him from joining her.

It did not.

“I don’t need a lawyer. I’m.” He paused, considering how the foreign his real name felt on his tongue — alien after a year of aliases. “I’m Jack Morrison. I was with the LAPD. You did an autopsy on Gabriel Reyes. Gang affiliated. Police shoot out. Now are we remembering?”

Ziegler’s tight swallow meant _yes._

Up and up they climbed. Jack’s eyes flew from the ticking floors to the doctor, trying to keep track of it all. The twitch of her fingers against her shoulder bag, the way she refused to meet his eyes, the mere seconds they had left before they’d spilling out into the crowded main floor.

“I just want to know if there were any other doctors involved on that. Your name’s on record, but if someone reopens that case and finds it wasn’t just you privy to the details or the evidence — that comes down on you. I don’t want this to get bigger than it is. Even if you have a fleeting _suspicion_ that someone was tampering with the examination or reports, you have to tell someone.”

Ziegler’s lips parted. The elevator pinged, the doors slid open, and out she went. Her figure surged past wandering costumed heroes and villains; she was faster than she looked.

Jack tore after her albeit less deftly. While her small frame allowed her to maneuver through loitering groups, he nearly collided into a pacing Elvis clutching at his arm.

Ziegler’s bag flapped heavily against her hip as she took a sharp corner.

They were headed to the employee parking lot. Alarm bells whirred to life and screamed warning in his mind, but all he cared about was catching Ziegler before she escaped for good.

Someone shouted after them. Another swore that they’d almost run over their kid. One man tried to grab Jack’s arm to stop his chase.

Ziegler threw a fleeting look over her shoulder as she shoved open exit doors at the end of the hall. There were no other corners to twist around, no crowds to work through. Catching up to the doctor was a simple straight shot, and though he no longer cared to keep his body in any exceptional shape, he could overtake her in a sprint.

A plain of blacktop greeted them, sparsely covered with all brands and colors of cars. Beyond that, a parking garage stood three levels high. The only light here came from the occasional light post stamped periodically throughout the parking lot.

Halfway to the garage, Ziegler looked behind her and gauged Jack’s distance. Seeing him so close, she steadily slowed her sprint to a jog, and then a walk, until finally she was still. Either her lungs were giving out, or she knew it was futile trying to outpace him.

Jack eased up, panting as he came to a slow halt. Though Ziegler looked wary being within any proximity of him, he drove right into her space. They weren’t doing that again; if she tried to run, he’d grab her.

“Alright,” the blonde woman gasped, wiping her sleeve across her slick forehead. The clip in her hair had somehow sprung entirely free, leaving her hair mussed against her shoulders and back. “Okay.”

“Hey!” a rough voice hollered from behind them.

Three men spilled out from the side exit. Even at a distance, he could spot their puffed up chests and their stern frowns: white knights. “Hey lady. You alright? This guy giving you trouble?”

Jack held his breath and glanced toward the doctor. She was going to throw him under the bus.

Instead, Ziegler flashed a weak smile and waved a hand. “Quite fine! Halloween prank. Have a good night.”

“You sure?” another called.

“Good night!” Angela declared with finality.

When all three stepped back inside, her eyes returned to Jack. The feigned amusement vanished and the white knuckled grip on her bag returned tenfold.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Jack explained in a rush, holding out his hands in both a placating and surrendering gesture. “All I know is someone is going around opening old cases and using a dead man’s memory to fuck with me. I’m just trying to get -”

“Answers. I know.” Angela brought her hand to her head absentmindedly — perhaps to toy with her hair — but the gesture was an aborted one. It ceased mid-motion, diverting instead to pat over her person until settling on the messenger back. Buckles clicked open and the leather flap slid back as she rifled inside.

Jack watched with growing wariness.

“I can’t give you much to work with. I’ve only this tip. It was forwarded to me.”

The _tip_ was some kind of cardstock folded into a square smaller than his palm. She held it aloft between her fingers, but the second Jack reached, it slipped from her grip and fluttered to the ground.

His need for its knowledge — his need to know whatever he _missed_ — had him crouching earnestly before she could offer. “I got it.”

In the low light he could make out the scrawl of pen or marker, but not what it said. Any thought to unfurl it, however, died at the telltale sound of a metallic _click_.

When he looked up, the barrel of Angela Ziegler’s gun stared him down. Her entire demeanor had changed, not like a chameleon but something else entirely. Not a transformation of colors or spots, not a shedding of skin. _A moth from its cocoon,_ he thought distantly, _with wings brandished._ Gone were the hunched shoulders, the knit brows, the wary eyes.

“I am _done_ ,” Ziegler hissed so sharply, so viciously that had he not been kneeling down, the promise of violence in her voice would have made him draw back. “With all of this. The biggest mistake I ever made was helping _him_.”

“Who?” Jack demanded.

Ziegler’s gun pressed harder against his forehead, digging painfully enough to leave a red mark. “ _Gott_ , you really don’t know. What do they call him now  — the _Reaper_ , like something out of a child’s story. The Reaper with his black eyes and his Black Watch.”

“Ziegler — Angela — just tell me who’s behind this. I can help,” he pleaded.

His answer was her cruel laugh. It burst from her lips without mirth, and though genuine amusement might have torn her attention away long enough to grab the gun, her shrewd gaze stayed locked on him. Unblinking, unflinching. “And end up in one of their black bags for breaking the rules? Did you not hear what I just said? He has people everywhere, he sees _everything_ , and he’s probably watching this right now.”

The pressure eased off his forehead as she backed away step by step.

Jack exhaled a raggedly and sagged deeper onto his knees.

“You hear that?” Ziegler called into the night. The weapon no longer stared him down, but now brandished to and fro like someone hid behind those parked cars. “I’m done! I settled my debt, I gave him what you wanted.”

Silence answered her paranoid shout.

Breathing hard, she turned the pistol back to Jack. Ziegler was undone, run down, and one foul remark from putting too much pressure on the trigger, but her hands were fixed, immobile. A practiced shot, then.

Jack shrank back and bits of loose gravel crunched noisily beneath his knees. The folded card remained tight in his palm, with both hands gently spread out to each side to prove he posed no threat. There was nothing else he could do; the M9 remained in its case in the hotel room, locked tight behind the 1-9-7-6 combination.

Left at the mercy of her trigger finger, Jack’s eyes followed her backward descent into the dark maw of the parking garage.

Her silhouette disappeared first.

Then, the metallic glint of the gun.

Until finally, her scuffling footsteps faded into nothing.

Seconds passed. An engine roared to life and tires peeled out, screaming for traction against slick concrete. Ziegler must have taken another exit out of the garage, because neither the car nor its headlights cut into his line of sight.

The car accelerated out onto the main road, but once there its engine and subsequent direction were lost to passing traffic.

Shakily, Jack forced himself to his feet, steady despite the sudden absence of adrenaline. Blood rushed south into his legs, leaving him light headed and dazed. He didn’t care — black spots dotted the corners of his vision and he didn’t care.

The card nearly ripped in his haste to unfold it. A flash of glossy gold and orange streaked the front; whatever it was, he didn’t allow himself to look.

Its back was rough cardstock paper, thickly creased down and across from the fold. Telltale black lines coupled with photography on the front marked it as more than just an ordinary note. This was a postcard, one left without address or stamp.

There was no room for either.

Garrett Duke’s voting advertisement came with a taunting question in unfamiliar scribble. Jack’s whereabouts had been private, but his role in Sunset Sights had not. Any number of detectives in Major Crimes could have sorted through the mess of that case. Any of them could have thrown the information to a third party. He and Gabriel made their fair share of enemies both in and out of the office.

Then, Gabriel had gone off and made more, with little thought to what repercussion might fall on Jack’s head.

Crooked cops, vengeful cops. Gang leaders all the way down to Anaheim and back. The way they left things between them — it wasn’t hard to imagine Gabriel giving them his name, hoping for some brand of cruel justice to catch up to him.

He’d been Erik Baker to avoid the police. Thom Reynolds to evade reporters. Bryant Grant to outrun each and every gang Gabriel made nice with. And Matthew Clarke because he was _terrified_ of whatever the man’s ghost had planned.

His ghost. _Gabriel was dead._ He was supposed to be -

A noise — mangled and guttural to his own ears — cracked from his straining throat. Inhuman, wounded: the sound of an animal under a killing blow. Jack’s trembling fingers sank into the edges of the postcard so tightly it nearly tore in two. Tears stung his eyes, threatening to film over his vision. Shock sent him reeling.

But even blind, deaf, and dumb, he’d know that handwriting.

Gabriel’s neat scrawl lined every inch of the postcard, breaking only where the thick creases rendered the ink into nothing: _TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH..._

On and on it went.

On and on Jack read, looking for the trick — a letter too misaligned with the rest, a bold combination spelling out a code, an image formed in the spaces between words. Something. Anything.

The postcard weighed down his hands until he was forced to pull it from view. Shoulders sagged, feet stumbled. He walked without purpose or intent — staggering from his spot, moaning low in his throat. His newly freed palm bracketed his mouth tightly, either to hold in the noise or to stop himself from being sick.

_Gabriel was alive. He was alive. He was alive this whole time. He was alive -_

Alive when Jack had tried to tear his office in Major Crimes apart at the news of his death. Alive when he’d begged to see the body, to see him one last time. Had Gabriel watched his own funeral with twisted satisfaction as twenty-one guns rang out — a veteran’s send off, his record scrubbed clean of any wrongdoing before Duke’s concocted plan?

Had he looked on when their friends held Jack steadfast, watching for some sign that his resolve would crumble like it had the night before in Ana’s kitchen? All he had wanted to do was escape them, their eyes, their coddling sympathies — and storm off like Jesse had —

_Jesse._

Jesse’s disappearance. _The Devil doesn’t release you once he’s got you in his grip._ And fuck  — Amélie Lacroix’s sneering ‘boy scout.’ _Easy, boy scout_ . _I’m just fucking with you._ Angela Ziegler. _The Reaper with his black eyes and his Black Watch._

Jane Doe.

Garrett Duke.

_La Madriguera._

Sunset Sights.

Jack’s back hit the cool metal of the light post just in time. Drained, his knees buckled, sending him crumpling downwards against it to sit.

The night air cooled the tear-tracks cutting over his cheeks. As his energy fled, so too did the harsh sting at his eyes and the strain in his throat. After years of running, here he was: a sitting duck laid out for the shot. Anyone could have come upon him, wrapped their hands around his neck, and strangled the life out of him, and Jack wouldn’t have found the strength to pry their grip away.

Holding Gabriel’s postcard seemed the extent of his will at that moment. Even then the gentle breeze fluttering through the parking lot threatened to tear the note away.

Jesse McCree. Amélie Lacroix. Angela Ziegler. Jane Doe. Garrett Duke. _La Madriguera._ Sunset Sights. Their names, faces, and memories lanced through his mind like cold steel. Cold enough to veil their sun-bleached impressions in his mind  — cold enough to white it out entirely, until he was left with a snow laden field that not even winter starved animals dared to forage.

The decaying barn fell into place as he remembered: black, white, hollow. Scorched holes for windows. An endless void inside.

Hell was cold and isolated. Hell was an endless winter, and there in the doorway stood Gabriel fucking Reyes, bending the shadows to his will. Cloaking himself in darkness like it was his funeral shroud.

And the whole time Jack had glanced that way — desperate to look any but that ruinous place inside himself — Gabriel had been watching him openly.

Nostrils flared as Jack heaved in a breath, the thought dragging him back to the present. The parking lot remained quiet; a car rolled past but failed to notice his prone place. On the main road, an ambulance’s siren cut to silence as it hastily raced toward the awaiting emergency room. If he was being watched, no one cared to announce themselves.

Jack pulled his hand into his lap and examined the mock affection laced across the postcard once more. Nothing about it had changed. No secret exposed itself to him the longer he looked.

Turning it over revealed the glossy front. Gold and orange marigold blossoms filled every last corner of the photograph, packed so tightly together that not a single speck of green from stem or leaf could be found. Their crinkled petals, some confetti thin, crushed together in a sea of spectacular hues: tigerlily orange, bright lemon, flushed red.

Gabriel used the image as a backdrop for his own message. Black marker sketched out and colored in a tombstone. Encircling it, the words: _YA NI EN LA PAZ DEL SEPULCRO CREO._

A laugh bubbled from Jack, near silent and hoarse. It sounded humorless; it felt hysteric.

Roughly translated, _I do not believe in the peace of the grave anymore._

 

* * *

 

The message needed no clarification. Like everything that had come before, it sent Jack on a single path with a single intended result. Sunset Sights, Ana’s home, The Cellar, Lena Oxton, Memorial Hospital — they were hand delivered clues, just obscure enough that Jack wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t suspect.

A bus ride to the motel brought an end to Halloween and any solace he’d collected over the years. Gabriel’s postcard left his mind in a state of constant flux. Was he truly alive? How had he survived? How long had he watched Jack struggle to put his life back together, to no avail? Humiliation tinged those questions; his face felt hot with them.

Morning meant _Día De Los Muertos._ Marigolds, a sketched tombstone, and a sugar skull painted woman (was she in on it, too?) all pointed in one direction: Gabriel’s grave. Theatrical and fitting. Would he find overturned earth and empty coffin? He thought of Poe and stories about lured men buried alive  — maybe Gabriel drew him out of hiding to make Jack’s home a tomb.

 _La paz del sepulcro_ slithered around his thoughts, twisting and constricting like they meant to snuff out everything else. _The peace of the grave, the peace of the grave, the peace of the grave._

Something about the antiquated _Melody Motel_ sign, flickering wildly with its dying bulbs, drew him from his daze. Bathed in its crimson glow, Jack stood rooted on the sidewalk, gripping his jacket tighter into his palm until the leather creaked soundly.

Red painted him in flashes as the cursive ‘ _lody_ ’ and ‘ _ote_ ’ letters fought fruitlessly against an impending death. Ruby red in one second, then dull vermilion as two letters cut out. Night as six went dark, swathing him in shadows, then brilliant carmine as they gasped for life.

His room was close and sleep beckoned, but so too did Gabriel. This was no careful hint sending him on the hunt. _Ya ni en la paz del sepulcro creo._ I do not believe in the peace of the grave anymore, which also meant _yo vivo._ I live.

Whatever Gabriel had planned was bigger than the bomb on _La Madriguera_ , and more jarring than his taunting reveal through Doctor Ziegler. He needed a plan, an escape route, and a weapon.

Considering the occasion, bullets felt impersonal; he wanted a knife.

Jack carried himself onward and into the nearest gas station, ready to take up a habit he’d long since kicked. A pack of Pall Malls and a cheap disposable lighter set him back five bucks. The first eventual drag burned his throat and sat heavy in his lungs. The next came easier, quicker — bitter on his tongue, but familiar.

By the time he climbed the grate metal stairs leading to his room, Jack had his coat stuffed under his arm and a new cigarette jammed between his chapped lips. The lighter sparked to flame easier this time, and the shot of nicotine through his system finally calmed his shaking hands. Exchanging the lighter for the keys in his pocket, Jack jimmied with the bolt lock until the door finally gave way.

A hand passed over the light switch, but when it didn’t turn on the corner lamp, Jack paused his inward stroll. Another flick of the switch only caused it to snap in the silence of his rundown room. Frowning, Jack pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tossed his jacket from his hand low against the wall.

It wasn’t a big room. A bed, a balcony situated under the buzzing _Melody Motel_ sign, and a small attached bathroom. If the cord had come unplugged, he could find and fix it easily enough.

Another step inside brought his pursuit to a grinding halt. Opposite the bed, the long blinds gave a gave a flutter, their plastic clacking together quietly as they resettled. Red neon and yellow street light spliced into the room, ghosting over walls and furniture before it disappeared altogether. The balcony door was open.

Again, the blinds gave a whirring churn, parting only enough to splash color on the room. This time it didn’t roll across the walls, the bed, or Jack like passing headlights. This time, something on the balcony kept him in permanent silhouette.

Tall. Broad shoulders. Wrapped up in black. _To the ends of the earth_. Jack’s teeth snapped together, leaving his jaw clenched and his lips sealed as to not make a sound.

Light arced through in one final sweep, then the man pushed aside the blinds, forearm braced against them like they were a fine tapestry guarding his royal entrance.

The grave had not diminished Gabriel Reyes’ beauty nor had it softened his cruel gaze. His shoulders were the same broad width Jack remembered well. His arms still looked defined beneath the fabric of his coat and his chest still tapered into pinched, narrow hips. There was a distinct chance he put on weight over the last handful of years; he looked stronger, bigger.

He wore his hair pushed back from his forehead, or maybe he had run a hand through it moments before, because it still carried an unruly quality and curled unbidden on its own. Grey touched his temples though, and black inked lines ran over the column of his throat, half-hidden beneath the collar. Whether he carried more remained a mystery — the whole of him was covered. Leather gloves even obscured his hands.

His hands, thick, calloused, and steady. A square palm creased with deep lines. Long fingers, scarred knuckles.

His hands wrapped around a gun.

Jack’s gutted exhale punched past his lips.

“Close the door,” Gabriel called. He had no right sounding like that — quiet and calm, with the same low voice that brought him to his knees, once upon a time. The barrel of the pistol stared him down, unwavering.

Jack didn’t give him a chance to pull back the hammer. Reaching behind himself, he swung the door and jammed his heel into its corner until it shut all the way.

“Lock it.”

His mouth twisted wryly, but he obeyed all the same. His right arm crossed his chest, hand twisting the bolt until it gave a telltale thud. Hoping to spare his wounded pride, he brought the cigarette back to his mouth and tried to force a measure of calm into his body.

Only then, when he was defenseless and trapped at a lock door, did Gabriel relent. The gun lowered, shifting to his right hand where it stayed by his side. His left grabbed for the corner wingback chair. Though threadbare, stained and clearly a relic from another decade, when Gabriel sat he made it seem like a throne. The light cutting through the blinds and grazing past his head could even make a crown.

Seconds of silence stretched between them. Jack tried to mentally calm his racing pulse to no avail. Then, with an elbow jut into the arm of the chair, Gabriel hoisted the gun into the air and canted his head to the side, inspecting it.

“Interesting.”

Jack responded with a short huff, no more than smoke blowing past his lips to cloud the air.

Gabriel pressed on, unfazed. “They’ve updated the design. M9A3. Smoother, less kick. Better front sight focus. Yet, here you are with an old army issue M9.”

Unable to stop himself, Jack’s head jerked toward his bed where he kept the gun case hidden. He found it instead laid out on top of the floral bedspread, open and empty. His attention cut back to Gabriel and the Beretta.

“Maybe you can’t afford the upgrade on your private detective’s salary.” There was no waver in his voice, but Jack knew what it meant when he put the faintest stress on his occupation. “Likely, judging by our current setting. You were never very good on your own.”

The leather of Gabriel’s gloves shifted audibly as he brought the gun back down. Lofted sideways in his grip, the barrel aimed his way in lackadaisical fashion.  Rich brown eyes met his.

“But the code… my birth year, Jack?”

_1-9-7-6._

Jack pulled the cigarette from his lips and squeezed tight. The ash had stretched down more than halfway to the filter. Another minute and it’d burn his fingers.

“Sentiment,” Gabriel advised coolly, “gets a man killed.”

“Suppose this is the part you tell me you know a thing or two about that,” he answered, his voice far weaker than he’d hoped it be for this confrontation.

“Once upon a time, but not anymore.”

“ _Ya ni en la paz del sepulcro creo,_ ” Jack recited.

“You butcher the words.”

Ash dripped from the cigarette onto the floor. Without a place to put the filter, Jack let it fall to the ground and crushed it under foot. “Don’t change the subject.”

“You want to have this talk — fine,” Gabriel answered. His tone — the pretense of cordial — had started to gain an edge. “Was it your tenderness that sent me to the grave?”

“Don’t put that on me. _Chacales_ , Sabbath Riders, Razors — you threw in with those people. We weren’t even together, then.”

“Do you really believe that? Have you lost all recollection of the night before my death?”

Jack inhaled sharply. No, he hadn’t forgotten that night. “I didn’t know.”

“I tried to tell you.”

“You laid accusations at my feet. All of this because I was promoted -”

“Yes,” Gabriel interrupted. “You were captain, and I was sent into the bowels of hell.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare — I begged you to get a transfer. To quit the force, to get away from Duke.”

It wasn’t fair that anger bled into his voice while Gabriel remained so level, so distant. “While you enjoyed your new rank, yes, I know.”

Jack snapped his mouth shut and tried in vain to gather himself. He wasn’t ashamed of loving Gabriel, but admittedly how low he fell without him — he didn’t want the truth to turn into a weapon of shame. Swallowing back his pride, Jack spoke hushedly, “I’ve hated myself for the past year. I never stopped mourning you.”

“My death,” Gabriel corrected, careless to Jack’s struggle, “but not what they did to me. Not what you did to me.”

Jack sagged against the door. His gaze traced over Gabriel’s silhouette, fighting to get the measure of him and his body language. “So that’s what this is: revenge.”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re going to make me pay for it.”

“I think so,” Gabriel replied without missing a beat.

“You think,” Jack challenged.

“I haven’t decided.”

 _“Ya ni en la paz del sepulcro creo._ Sounds like sentiment to me.”

“Perhaps, if this meeting was held at my grave.”

“‘To the ends of the earth.’ Out of all our exchanges that’s what you pick to cut me deepest. That’s not sentiment either?

His words were thrown back at his feet, twisted to suit Gabriel’s need. “Sounds like a threat.”

Jack pushed himself from the door, wiping the perspiration on his palms against his jeans. The gun in Gabriel’s grasp snapped his way again, no longer a lazy extension of his hand. “You wanna have this out, fine. You wanna lay this at my feet, _fine_. But don’t think for a second you can rewrite our history. I was good. I was so damn good and you couldn’t figure out what to do with yourself.”

“I think you really do believe that. Even in squalor, you’ve yet to learn humility.”

“And you’re itching to put me in my place, aren’t you? ‘Never good on my own.’ You wouldn’t have _touched_ me if I wasn’t.”

Gabriel’s fingers tapped a steady rhythm against the gun’s siding. The leather did nothing to mute the metallic sound. “Careful.”

“What was worse, Gabe? Getting paired with a rookie that threatened to outshine you, or realizing you wanted to fuck that rookie?”

In their time apart, Jack had forgotten how efficient the other man was within close quarters. Spurned on by his wounded pride, Jack danced closer across the room, ignoring the loaded Beretta and zoning in on Gabriel. The hammer had yet to be pulled back and his finger still sat on the trigger guard — he was walking a thin line, but confident he hadn’t crossed it.

He realized his fatal error a half-second too late. The only sound signalling Gabriel’s sudden surge forward was a sharp creak of the wingback chair. It toppled over, nearly crashing into the sliding glass door behind it. Blinds fluttered and red filled the room once more, illuminating Gabriel’s features for the first time.

The light made his eyes look brighter than he remembered, even as they narrowed in cold fury. His hair fell from its pushed back state, hanging along his forehead, dipping down to his furrowed brows. Even his lip curled up, flashing teeth in a mute snarl.

There was no time to react, not when he was struck at once by the proximity of a man long thought dead. Gabriel swept one of his leg out from under him, and Jack stumbled with it. Only the mercy of a strong hand around the back of his neck spared him from the floor. He was left dipping back, desperately off balance, with nothing to cling to but Gabriel’s long coat. Jack knotted his fingers into the fine fabric, tugging sharply to get his feet squarely beneath him.

The cool metal of the gun kissed his cheek — a grazing touch before it flattened wholly against the side of his face. Its front sight, and the crown of his blond head, pointed to the door. It wouldn’t kill him if Gabriel pulled the trigger, but the Beretta’s recoil might cut and sear his face. The sound might even deafen him in one ear.

But then, it might deafen and scorch Gabriel in turn. He was so close, and though he couldn’t feel the warmth of his breath, he could feel _him_ — a solid weight bearing down.

The thought of mutual destruction shouldn’t have felt so intimate. And it shouldn’t have felt like an intimate touch, but Gabriel’s hands were ever capable of violence and romance. He knew how to wound just the same as he knew how to wind up.

“What I found most tragic,” Gabriel began, voice quiet and rumbling, “was how ready I was to give you everything, even after your betrayal. Do you think I came to you two years late because I needed the help? _Los Chacales_ ,” the whispered name rolled off his tongue without fault, “Sabbath Riders, Razors. I brought them to heel. I built my empire from nothing and came to you still.”

Jack’s grip tightened in the others coat as he searched over his face for the lie.

“I would have forgiven everything,” the man added idly, gently stroking Jack’s blonde hair from his temple with the barrel of the gun. He sounded wistful.

The tone incensed him.

“ _Forgiven_ ,” Jack repeated incredulously, struggling to keep his voice as measured as Gabriel’s. “For accepting a _job_.”

“For choosing them over me,” Gabriel corrected, glancing down to meet blue eyes.

“There was a time I’d have walked away — fuck, I thought about it. But you didn’t give me much of a choice.”

“I gave you -”

“You said it yourself: never good on my own. You liked me best when I stayed in line right behind you. Was that what I would have done in Black Watch, Gabe? Two steps behind, tucked in your shadow while you built up a dozen Sunset Sights across Los Angeles?”

The combination of those words — Black Watch and Sunset Sights — drew a veil over Gabriel’s face. The idle attention he doted on Jack ceased in an instant; his eyes grew hard, watching him with pinpoint focus.

“Who told you…” he began, only to stop with a terse breath out his flaring nostrils. “Ziegler.”

“Is that your empire? Sunset Sights rebranded. You with your crown — the Reaper with his black eyes and his Black Watch?” His back strained with their angle, but still Gabriel showed no sign of relenting.

“Do you believe I’d create another Hell like _La Madriguera_ was, Jack?” Gabriel never rushed his questions when fresh anger sank into his tone  — he only spoke more sharply, like his tongue alone could lash.

“I thought you were dead a day ago.”

“Even when I paint a picture for you, even as I lay evidence at your feet, you trip haphazardly into blind guesswork. You think I had something to do with Sunset Sights — I see.” Finality colored that last part. Gabriel gradually sank back, letting Jack get his balance.

 _I don’t,_ Jack meant to say, because he knew Gabriel had nothing to do with its horrors. The mysterious death around Jane Doe and the trail leading them circles tortured them both. When finally the right evidence slotted into place, the path took them straight to Sunset Sights.

A youth hostel, they thought, advertised as a place for young people to stay when passing through southern California. At best they hoped to get a lead on a real suspect.

Inside, Gabriel and Jack were confronted with its reality: Sunset Sights was a trafficking and forced prostitution ring. It took the woman at the front desk all of two seconds to realize they were cops not clients, and then everything had gone to shit.

Did he think this man capable of continuing that legacy? No, but with words failing him and Gabriel sliding away so quickly, Jack wrenched his hand into the man’s collar and pulled.

It did nothing to draw him closer, but it stopped his backwards descent. The collar of his shirt dipped down under Jack’s rough grip, exposing the inked tattoo in full.

Red eyes peering out of some sort of elongated skull — he’d seen that before.

There was no moment to dwell on the sight though, because Gabriel tore his hand away and sent Jack stumbling back.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” the other remarked with palpable distaste.

“I’ve changed plenty — just not in the way you’d have liked.”

“No, I suppose not. How disappointing. All that potential in the right hands — wasted.” That wistful tone again.

“Fuck off.”

“That’s the plan,” Gabriel fired back, rounding on him. They were the same height, but moments like these made Jack feel smaller somehow. “I arranged this whole thing thinking it’d end with a bullet in the back of your head. But when you didn’t try to skip town after Duke and Sunset Sights, I thought maybe — just maybe — there was hope for you yet. My Jack Morrison, still throwing himself head first in the pursuit of answers. My Jackie, distraught in a parking lot, sobbing over a handful of words I told him once. My stupid _sentimental_ boy.

“But your pride’s still a problem. You should be throwing yourself at my feet, yet you can only deflect responsibility and hurl accusations. Now… what would hurt Jack Morrison most in this scenario? A quick death, or the knowledge that he had me right here, right in front of him, and sent me away again? That once more he made the same mistake, and once more he’ll never see me again?”

“Gabe,” Jack said in a rush, his chest panging with that possibility. “That’s not what I want. Just hold on, we can talk. Really talk about it all.”

“I’ve heard enough.” Gabriel strode past Jack, his eyes sweeping over him one last time before he made for the door.

Any attempt at stopping him was too easily shrugged off. He slipped from Jack’s outstretched hands, brushed off the bulk of his body, and even moved the door open despite how desperately the blond man fought to keep it shut.

“You don’t mind if I keep this, do you?” Gabriel asked over his shoulder, hoisting the Beretta up. “It’s mine after all.”

Jack ignored the question, fumbling over his words instead to reason with Gabriel. As the older man strolled down the length of the exterior hall, Jack kept on his heel and tried for his arm again. Gabriel didn’t need to look for the touch to avoid it.

“Gabe, I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear — I’m sorry? I’ll say it as many times as you need. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Down the metal stairs they went. A black SUV awaited in the parking lot, engine and lights on, but Jack only gave it a fleeting glance. “This is me trying to stop you. This is me _begging_ you to just wait!”

Gabriel’s silence stretched on.

“To the ends of the earth — you said that bullshit. You said you’d come after me, and now you’re just going to walk away? That it? All that shit about me being blind — what about you? You don’t think I’ve been _killing myself_ ,” his voice broke at that, choking in his throat, “every day for a year? And all of it was a fucking lie?”

The SUV’s back door opened before Gabriel could reach it. Inside, Amélie Lacroix shifted to the opposite bucket seat and looked on with mute interest. Her eyes lingered on Jack, then shifted questionably to the other man.

“Please,” Jack gasped out, his voice straining around the word.

When Gabriel climbed into the Cadillac, his attention only shifted back to Jack as he grabbed for the open door. His gaze lingered under knit brows, but then the tension laced across his weathered features evaporated altogether. “Goodbye, Jack.”

The door closed shut before he could find the right thing to say. Anguish had him going for the handle of the door and pulling on it, hoping to tear it open, but the lock clicked internally, shutting him out.

“Gabe!”

The car pulled out slow, loose bits of gravel grinding under the tires as it went. Jack carried himself in pace with it, throwing the side of his curled fist into the window, shouting himself hoarse for the man to stop.

It didn’t. At the mouth of the parking lot, the engine roared with acceleration and tires squealed sharply. The SUV tore out into the street so suddenly it nearly side-swiped a hatchback. Horns blared after them, then eventually fell quiet.

The Melody Motel’s sign buzzed cacophonous red. Its dying letters flashed in some foreign Morse code — like a warning, a sign to stop, _S.O.S._

 

* * *

 

Inside the SUV, Gabriel turned his army issued Beretta over in his hands. Jack had a number of guns when they lived together — ones worth far more than a M9 from the 1990s. It looked diligently cared for even two decades later, though. Not a single mark scuffed the black metal.

“Are you done,” Amélie murmured, “with this distraction?”

The question posed from anyone else would have raked harshly against his nerves. Her voice carried no inflection, no hint of judgement. She kept her eyes trained on the road outside her window.

Gabriel pulled his attention back to the gun and tried not to think about the code it’d been locked behind.

1-9-7-6.

“Yes,” he lied.

 

* * *

 

 _Ya ni en la paz del sepulcro creo,_ Jack thought with mounting anger. Left in Gabriel’s ruinous wake for the second time, his mind rolled over every cruel barb thrown back and forth between them. A year ago, Gabriel’s absence had him ripping apart his own life in penance. Maybe that’s what the other counted on again  — for Jack to lay himself lower than he already was.

A short, shuddering breath left him. He tried to draw it out, to keep it calm and steady.

_Ya ni en la paz del sepulcro creo._

The motel sign colored his vision red.

“That makes two of us, Gabriel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [**C U A T R O** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vopR3ys8Kw)
> 
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> 
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> 
> [tumblr.](http://thewinterking.tumblr.com)  
>  
> 
> Thank you to [Motorghost](http://archiveofourown.org/users/motorghost/pseuds/motorghost) for beta reading this chapter. 
> 
> Of note: Gabriel's phrase on the front of the postcard carries a connotation about not trusting anyone. Though Jack knows passing Spanish, this meaning is lost on him and he takes it more literally  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Misogynist slur halfway through, general violence and drug mention. Content warning for light dom/sub themes, mostly unspoken.

 

**SEVEN YEARS AGO —**

 

 _Spun out and breathless,_ he decided. _That’s how he makes me feel._

Spun out and breathless, stumbling for footing, desperate to grab something and cling -- _like a blind man navigating a storm_. He certainly felt windswept collapsing onto the width of the bed; the back of his knees hit the edge with too much force and sent him careening. It wasn’t the first time he’d tripped over his two left feet, sightless to everything but Gabriel.

Stretched out, Jack canted his head up and studied the ceiling. West coast aesthetics meant ugly textured drywalls and off-white paint. He preferred it to the blank canvas of his childhood room. Here, he could think the splattered lumps as clouds and look for the hidden images in them. Each divot and groove held a secret message about this moment and every one to follow.

A lumpy _G_ meant Gabriel. Maybe there was a _J_ up there, too.

The bed dipped and Jack felt his pulse quicken. They were going on three months and still he had yet to get used to this -- to _them_. Life was shit to most people; it was lonely and burdened without direction or purpose. If you were lucky, you found someone halfway decent to share your life with.

It wasn’t supposed to be this happy. _He_ wasn’t supposed to be this happy -- not after he walked out of Iraq unscathed while the rest of his friends died in a fiery wreck.

Santiago. Murphy. Russo. Parker. If he stared long enough, would he see their faces etched somewhere above? The thought swelled sickly in his chest, but it had no time to fester.

Gabriel’s hand dragged over his leg, heavy and warm. “You’re miles away.”

Jack turned his head to the side and studied the other man. His lips were as kiss-swollen as Jack’s felt. Beneath his undone collar, a dark bruise started to take shape. Another sat along the strong line of his jaw, where he had nipped sharp enough to draw a hiss out of Gabriel.

“Sorry -- I was thinkin’ about the case.”

The other man hummed thoughtfully, considering his words with a creased brow and downcast eyes. Then, his palm rolled past his knee and smoothed upwards. “We’ve got to work on your lying, Morrison. My nephew weaves a more convincing story than you.”

A soft _huff_ blew past Jack’s lips. “That’s ‘cause he’s cute.”

“You’re cute.” Bolder yet, his fingers dipped into the crease of his thigh.

Jack snapped his hand over Gabriel’s wrist, stopping his lazy pursuit. “You think?”

Gabriel’s mouth quirked -- a single mischievous tell -- before his grip went tight and sent Jack jerking in surprise. “Yeah, you’re just a shit liar.”

A peal of low rolling laughter burst from the older man, but Jack silenced it with a kiss. There was a method to the first one between them -- a tacit game they liked to play. It started chaste, closed mouth and careful, like anything more might frighten Jack from his arms. Gabriel liked to coax him into it; his knuckles brushed feather soft against Jack’s cheek in one moment, and then his fingers unfurled and glossed across his temple in the next.

Gradually, Jack yielded with a sigh and the smear of his lips. Gabriel’s tongue dragged _in_ languidly -- testing and tasting -- swiping deeper each time. No frenzied rush followed; he kissed like he could stay there all night, savoring this unspoken dance.

But the best part was when Gabriel surged forward without signal -- when his body was a solid weight against Jack’s own, herding him flat. Box springs creaked and fabric rustled as the other man pressed firm into his side, leaving him propped up and staring down.

His lips looked so tender and wet in the low light; Jack couldn’t help but brush the pads of his fingers over them.

Gabriel grabbed the back of his hand, and then his eyes grew lidded and he leaned forward to press his mouth to every last digit. Silent. Reverent.

A breath hitched in Jack’s throat. He wanted to say, _you’re not like a storm at all._

“You gonna teach me how to be a good liar, that right?” he said instead.

“Jackie,” Gabriel rumbled with promise, “I’m going to teach you everything.”

 

 

 

 **PRESENT DAY** **—**

 

November should have greeted the morning with a hazy grey sky. It should have brought a biting cold front that punished any inch of exposed skin. Indiana had the decency to slide toward freezing temperatures this time of year. Ugly weather suited his mood and it was only fair that Gabriel’s return ushered in some notable change on the world.

Overcast skies, torrential downpour, a wildfire sparked by lightning — anything. Southern California stubbornly remained as it had the day before; the unobscured sun made for a warm, comfortable afternoon that everyone else seemed to enjoy.

But it left Jack feeling vulnerable. His previous paranoia had been a delusion of possibilities — a silent series of _what ifs._  What if a reporter dug up the Sunset Sights case files? What if someone discovered the nature of his relationship with Gabriel? What if they came for revenge?

New names, ditched phones and occasional glances over his shoulder made him feel safe. It turned out _feeling safe_ and _being safe_ were two different things.

Walking up to Ana’s porch, he felt keenly like an injured animal dragging itself to shelter, oblivious to the predators at his heel. Gabriel and the whole of Black Watch were still out there somewhere. It would have been better to come at night. It would have been better not to come at all.

Jack rapped his knuckles on the front door and waited with a shoulder pressed against the home’s stucco wall. His fingers scratched idly along his forehead, only to pause when they traced over the healing scar. It cut down across his brow and faded at his cheekbone. Had he gone to the hospital like the paramedic demanded, they’d have stitched him up and the tissue might have healed evenly. Butterfly bandages patched his skin together but the ugly divot it left behind was permanent.

 _Scars from_ La Madriguera _to match Gabriel’s._

A frenzy of footsteps inside tore him from his thoughts and forced him to tuck his hand back into his pocket. Quick bare feet clapped along Ana’s tiled floors, only to be drowned out by heavy thudding shoes.

“Ha! Fareeha slides home for the win and the crowd goes wild!”

“Hardly fair!” came the booming reply. “You take corners much quicker than I do.”

Jack straightened up off the wall and reeled away in alarm. He didn’t want to see -

The door clattered loudly before opening to reveal Reinhardt and Fareeha. Both startled and stilled at the sight of him. Fareeha had grown several inches since he last saw her and her once cropped hair was thrown into a high ponytail. Reinhardt looked unchanged; he’d lost his eye and gone a premature grey years ago.

Jack’s eyes darted between them as he struggled with something to say. He’d already gone through this exact thing with Ana, and yet he found himself back at square one — dazed and guilty.

“Jack?” Fareeha breathed in awe.

Reinhardt cleared his throat sharply. “Why don’t you get your mother? I’m sure she -”

Ignoring him, Fareeha slammed into Jack’s middle and knocked the breath out of him in one tight squeeze. She pulled away a half-second later, but not before grabbing the sleeve of his jacket to usher him inside. “Come in! I haven’t seen you in _forever_ and I have so much to tell you! You know Reinhardt — he’s dating mom which I guess is cool.”

Reinhardt shifted his large frame out of the way as they passed, but Jack could sense his appraising stare trailing him all the way to the kitchen.

Cereal boxes, bowls and spoons sat on the table with an unfurled newspaper. A splash of milk soaked a discarded ad and crept steadily toward a cloth place mat. From the living room, a local news station cut to a segment about upcoming elections.

Fareeha pulled out a chair and ushered Jack into it, remarkably formal for an elementary schooler. He sat heavily and kept his wary attention pinned on her as she clambered into her own seat. “What grade are you in now? Third?”

She scoffed, affronted. “I’m in _fourth._  I’m ten.”

Jack whistled low. “Practically an adult.”

“That’s what I keep telling mom. I wanna join karate, but she thinks I’m too young.” Fareeha gave a roll of her eyes and jammed her spoon loudly into the bowl. More milk splashed onto the table.

Jack shifted, sinking deeper into his chair as he fought for a thread to keep the conversation going. Engaging Ana’s kids was always Gabriel’s territory, not his. “Is that what your mom actually said?”

“No, but I know what she’s thinking. She babies me. Ever since Jesse left…”

“Well,” he cut in quickly, not wanting to go down that path, “maybe she’s afraid you’ll beat someone up.”

Fareeha didn’t turn away from the bowl, but her eyes snapped to his. They narrowed slyly and her mouth quirked into a mischievous smile.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“What is?” Ana asked, bursting into the kitchen like she was there to put out small fires. She wore a long bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head, but locks of her black hair had slipped from its hold. She hovered over Jack’s shoulder, shrewdly looking at the table before eventually spotting the milk that had sloshed everywhere. “Clean that up.”

Jack pushed his chair out to follow the clipped order.

“Not _you._  Fareeha, get a cloth and wipe the table down. And put your bowl in the sink!” Without missing a beat, she struck Jack in the shoulder with the back of her hand. “What were you saying?”

“That your daughter’s gonna grow up and cold-clock a man in a Sears.”

Ana leveled a look at him. “It was Best Buy.”

Reinhardt’s thunderous footsteps signaled his return, and that was all he had to prepare himself before heavy hands grabbed his shoulders. Jack flinched at the jostling touch.

“Jack.”

“Reinhardt.”

“It’s good to see you again.”

“Thanks -”

“I’m impressed by your perseverance. Ana tells me you were still distraught over Gabriel -”

“ _Reinhardt!"_ Ana hissed.

“- but know none of us think poorly of you -”

Fareeha’s spoon clattered into the sink noisily.

“-for what he did. I’m glad you’re moving on.”

“Uh,” Jack responded eloquently.

The answer seemed to satisfy the burly man, because his palms clapped down again on Jack’s shoulders. With a nod, Reinhardt stepped from the table and gestured to Fareeha. “Time for school, then?”

“Oh god, _go,"_ Ana moaned, sinking her face into her hand.

Fareeha quietly stepped from the counter without sparing them a secondary glance. Her coat was pulled on and her backpack slid over her shoulders in eerie silence. Wherever her mind was, it wasn’t here in this room.

Reinhardt fumbled for his keys and then they were out the door.

Ana collapsed into a chair across and shot him an apologetic look. “Shit — I’m sorry. He means well, he just has a grudge against Gabriel.”

“He hardly knew him,” Jack challenged before he could stop himself. The tone was far too defensive to his own ears. There was no reason to defend him anymore, not when everything had been a cruel joke.

Ana seemed unfazed. “He saw how much it upset Jesse and Fareeha. You disappeared on us after it happened, too.”

“Oh.”

He knew what his response was supposed to look like: a tight throat, twitching fingers, and stammering apologies. Something visceral and ugly. Something that made Ana frown.

“That scar’s healing like shit.”

“Yeah.”

When his hands settled on the table, they did so without strain or tremor. The feeling of Gabriel’s coat still stained his fingertips and somehow he found it grounding. It hadn’t been a haunting dream or a trick of the light. Gabriel was alive and he’d come for him.

(And he wondered how it might have been if only he had pushed the others boundaries — if he’d rucked up his shirt to find skin, if he’d scraped his nails hard enough to draw blood. Would Gabriel draw away in disgust? Would he haul him close? What was he thinking then — what could he possibly be thinking —)

“ _Hey."_  Ana surged forward, grabbing for his hand and his attention. “You’re scaring me. Did something happen? Is it Jesse? Did you find him -”

 _Jesse._  Shit.

Jack pulled back and jammed his hands into his jacket’s pockets. Her touch threatened to chase away the ghost of Gabriel’s.

“No, not yet.” A half-truth. “I have some leads, though.”

When no further elaboration came, Ana’s brows hiked dramatically towards the towel. “You going to tell me these leads?”

“It’s complicated. I don’t really have names, just a general direction.”

“A general direction,” Ana repeated slowly.

“Yeah. I don’t think he’s using again, but he’s probably fallen in with a bad crowd. Not entirely sure.”

“So this was a check up? You could have called.”

Taking in a sharp breath, he found himself looking elsewhere. Fresh roses sat on the far end of the kitchen counter, undoubtedly bought and delivered by Reinhardt. Above him, the ceiling fan spun in lazy circulation. In the living room, a commercial cut to Garrett Duke as he spoke on the dangers facing Los Angeles County.

Ana hadn’t stopped leaning forward against the table, but now her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What are you hiding?”

‘ _... and with your vote for sheriff on election day,'_  continued Duke, ‘ _I’ll do everything in my power to keep our streets safe...'_

No hesitation marred his voice when he found Ana’s awaiting gaze. “I need a gun.”

“A gun? Jack -”

“It’s not what you think,” he answered in a rush. “He’s not in danger, but I have to shake someone down to find out more.”

“If you know something, then call the _actual_ police or tell me so I can bring him home!”

“You wanted me to find him-”

Ana’s chair scraped sharply against the floor as she picked herself up. “Don’t make this about your pride. You offered to find him and I’m _letting_ you help me out. You don’t get to hold onto information because you want to be a hero again -”

“That’s not -”

“You know something and you’re keeping it from me!”

Jack barely got a step from the table before Ana rounded on him so sharply the towel slipped from her head. Damp hair tumbled towards her face, but she gave it no chance to hang in her eyes. She whipped it back with a ferocity he struggled to match.

“I’m tryin’ to get Jesse back!”

“No, you’re playing games because you’ve already lost everything! You think because Gabriel died it gives you the right to drag others down with you. He’s twenty-three! What happened to Gabriel could happen to him!”

 _Gabe’s alive,_ he wanted to bellow. _He’s alive and he’s been fucking with us all this whole time._

He had the postcard in his pocket. All he needed was to pull the thing out and point to Gabriel’s handwriting. He knew Ana would eventually believe him. Maybe she’d even support him and want to come along.

But, that was the problem. He didn’t want her at his side on this, and it had nothing to do with her budding romance with Reinhardt or the way it’d worry Fareeha. From the early days in Major Crimes to _La Madriguera_  and beyond, it had always been them. _Gabriel and Jack._

What would it mean to her that Gabriel had fought between abducting and jettisoning him? How could he translate the cool touch of a Beretta into a declaration of love? Would she understand why his knees buckled under a touch that both promised and threatened? And what longing would she find in the words _to the ends of the earth_ , if any at all?

The postcard remained in tucked away not because it was too difficult to convince her, but because those words weren’t meant for anyone else. Gabriel hadn’t sent them through proxy like the message about Sunset Sights, whose handwriting he didn’t know. He hadn’t stormed his motel room with three others flanking him in threat. This was their dance alone.

 _Ya ni en la paz del sepulcro creo_. No peace.

He found it far too easy to fake a frown and hunch his shoulders. _Liars forget their body,_  Gabriel once told him, _you can always spot the deceit when their tone doesn’t match their posture._

Jack chanced a look at Ana, then tore his eyes down and away: the mark of silent humiliation. He stood like he couldn’t quite turn and face her scathing judgement — as though it was too much to bear.

_Take shame. Shame isn’t  a feeling; it’s a weight trying to crush a man down to the grave._

He touched the scar branding his face, tender and seemingly thoughtless. In truth, the move was calculated: it brought Ana’s shrewd focus to the marred skin. Pretending to be caught red handed, Jack dropped his hand away and drew his shoulders further inward. He looked hunted. Debased. Hurt.

_A good liar has all that down before they even open their mouth._

“Alright,” Jack rasped. “Alright, you got me. I’m sorry. This isn’t about Jesse. I’ve been takin’ side jobs for money and collectin’ some information. Pissed off the wrong people and I haven’t been able to sleep. Just figured a gun would help me feel safe.”

Ana watched him in silence. The anger had faded from her face, but now something else awoke in its stead. “These men did that to you?”

_And if you’ve done all that, you can make the world believe anything._

“Just leave it alone, Ana.”

“I wish you would’ve told me. This whole time I thought you were looking for Jesse.”

 _Disappointment,_  he realized. Disappointment had come in her anger’s stead.

“So…  you really haven’t heard anything from him?”

“I’m sorry.”

Jack turned away for good measure. He hardly took a step before Ana made to stop him.

“Wait. I’ll give you a gun — as long as you promise not to actually use it.”

Though Jack’s hair had turned ashy blonde and his youthful features now looked weathered, he was still the consummate golden boy in the eyes of his friends. An Indiana born and raised Catholic. A closet case war veteran. There was something disarming about that — something pitiable. Downcast eyes and a tight-mouthed smile always brought out the best in them, sent them running to help.

Here in Ana’s kitchen, he glanced sidelong at her feet and shot a humorless smile in her direction. He didn’t lie again; he didn’t need to. It was too easy sidestepping the demand entirely. “You really think I wanna be a hero?”

Ana bent down to pick up her discarded towel and tossed it over her shoulder. “I think you’re hard headed. God, you really had me worried there for a second. ‘Going to shake someone down’ — what a thing to say. I’ve got enough grey hairs without you adding to them.”

“Sorry,” Jack answered automatically. Once on her heel, the pinched, practiced expression vanished entirely.

Ana left Jack to wait in the upstairs loft as she retreated to her bedroom, exchanging robe for jeans and a shirt. Her long hair was gathered into a thick braid when she returned; it hadn’t yet dried and left a wet stain across her shoulder. Keys jostled in her hands as she went for the closet door. Inside stood a tall metal cabinet so wide it nearly ate up the entire space.

It’d been a shared hobby between them. While Jack never cared for the kind of rifle sport Ana engaged in, they spent two weekends out of every month at a firing range outside of Glendale. She was always the better shot, but her guidance helped perfect his skill.

When she opened the cabinet, Jack remembered with crystal clarity why his old collection never came close to rivaling hers. He counted ten assembled rifles on display, seven handguns on the door, three blades (one of which was illegal), and countless rounds of ammo carefully stored in small yellow containers.

The keys rattled as she shoved them into her pocket. Without waiting for his input, she grabbed one of the low clipped pistols, checked that it was properly unloaded, then passed it Jack’s way.

Gun in hand, Jack gave it one look before turning his flat expression to Ana.

“What?” she questioned with raised eyebrows.

Jack’s face remained unchanged as he lifted the pistol higher. “This is a Taurus.”

“Yeah, and? It’s a 940.”

“It’s shit.”

“It’s not _shit."_

Shifting his grip on the weapon, his free hand pointed to the mound of his palm beneath his index finger. Miniscule but still entirely there was an old scar carved into his skin. “I had a Taurus and we’ve had this conversation. If I want to tear open my hand with every recoil, I’ll use one of these.”

Ana stifled a groan. “You cut your hand because you were holding it wrong.”

“The trigger bar came out! My grip was fine.”

“Okay, no Taurus.”

When she extended her hand, Jack returned it posthaste. As she stored the gun, he craned his head to see what else she had on display. “What about the Glock -”

Her head jerked towards him, sending her braid striking her other shoulder. “You’re not getting the Glock. That’s my favorite.”

There was a Beretta, but Jack found he didn’t want a replacement for the old M9 he liked so well. An embellished Colt gleamed temptingly and next to that was -

“That a SIG Sauer?”

“You’re so predictable, Morrison,” Ana sighed, but she unhooked the gun from the door all the same.

Though the P226 sat heavier in his hand than his Army issued P229 had, he found it relatively alike. Familiarity was good in this case — especially if he ended up having to use it. “Why’s that?”

“Because your farm boy act doesn’t work when you have expensive taste,” she answered without falter. When she turned back, it was with a thin box of ammunition brandished his way.

Jack took it and slid it unceremoniously into his pocket, but not without jostling the worn leather of his coat in show. “Didn’t realize _this_ was expensive taste.”

“I didn’t mean clothes.”

“What then?”

“A rich taste for whatever you can shoot, drive, or fuck.”

Jack’s lips parted in dumbfounded surprise. When no defense came to mind, he settled for a clipped, “Most gun dealers don’t double as psychoanalysts.”

“No, but that’s what gets people in the door here. Free screening with every purchase.” Ana lolled her head to the side as she watched him. Tapping the side of the reinforced door, she gestured down to the cabinet with the body language of a skeptical salesman. “Anything else the Amari Ammo Shop can do for you? An Uzi would scare off those assholes, but I’m afraid I’m all out.”

With the P226 tucked away and his shirt pulled cleanly over it, Jack’s gaze cut back to the various weapons at her disposal. A gun would do the trick, but he thought of Gabriel and his wistful admonishment.

 _How disappointing. All that potential in the right hands_ _— wasted._

“I’ll take the switchblade.”

 

 

**FIVE YEARS AGO—**

  

His bloodied knuckles were glossy black in the unlit alley. Jack spared them a glance as he pulled a cigarette to his lips and fumbled with the match. Adrenaline and anger had him trembling; it took seven strikes against the book before one ignited. The burn of smoke in his lungs steadied him little by little.

The wall at his back hummed with a bass beat that fell out of rhythm with his heart. Whatever song they played now was just as indecipherable as the last ten. Clubs had never been his scene, and before tonight he’d never set foot in one aimed at gay men. This had been Gabriel’s idea, and because Jack figured he’d follow him anywhere -- even straight off a cliff -- he had indulged.

His hand throbbed; he knew better than to hit a man where teeth could slice skin.

“You get that anger out of your system?”

At the mouth of the alley stood Gabriel, his arms folded squarely across his chest, his stance wide and unimpressed. His profile acted as a canvas for the grainy light spilling from the nearby club. Blue light arced past his stern mouth, then bubbled like water over his nose, eyes, and brow. The steady submersion did nothing to soften the intensity of his gaze. But of all things, it was the exposed line of dark skin that held his attention. A few buttons had come undone somewhere during the night, leaving his throat and a glimpse of his chest in plain sight. A gold chain glinted there, holding its color despite the strobe lights nearby.

His crucifix. Easter was around the corner, which meant Gabriel remembered he was Catholic.

 _Funny,_  Jack wanted to say, _I don’t remember Jesus spending forty days and forty nights in the gayest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard._

“Well?” Gabriel pressed sharply. Darkness engulfed him as he stepped into the narrow alleyway. “I had to pay off the bouncer and strong-arm Cristian into not calling the police. Figured that’d be awkward for all of us.”

“Strong-arm Cristian? Was that a bit like you _catching up_ with him?”

“Don’t start a fight over something you don’t actually believe.”

Jack bit back a bitter laugh and brought the cigarette to his lips. He answered instead with a skeptical rise of his eyebrows and an exhale of smoke.

“This is new,” Gabriel continued. “This misplaced jealousy.”

“You can’t read me like I’m a perp.”

Gabriel took his time finding his way over to Jack. “We both know I can. In my own time.”

That much was true.

“Why don’t you tell me instead?” Gabriel urged, his voice dropping to an intimate murmur. “ Tell me what’s got you in this mood. Come on, sweetheart.”

 _Sweetheart._  Jack let his eyes slip shut — dazed, desired, and blooming heatedly under the endearment. He’d been _baby_ and _Jackie,_  but never that.

“You’re usually so good for me.” He didn’t need to look to know how Gabriel had crowded closer with that line.

He was mixing bedroom talk with whatever _this_ was, and on any other day Jack would have called him on it. Tonight though, he simply tilted his head against the cool stone wall and swallowed back his pride. “It’s gonna sound crazy.”

“Try me.”

His mouth curled lopsidedly with a humor he didn’t feel. Maybe if he smiled through this, it wouldn’t sound so pathetic, so troubling. “I can’t fuckin’ stand the idea of you with someone else. I can’t stand the thought that you’ll get bored of me and take off with some… some…”

Someone younger, someone more bright eyed, someone _new._

Jack flicked ash to the side impatiently and started to bring the filter back to mouth. He found himself stopped by a hand around his wrist, and only then did he lower his head and open his eyes to look.

Gabriel plucked the cigarette from his fingers and slotted it between his own lips. One quick drag was all he took before casting it aside altogether. His eyes sank from Jack’s to his injured hand -- split skin, bone and blood made for an ugly sight, but Gabriel looked unbothered.

“Have I made you feel unwanted?”

“No, that’s not -”

Jack stopped short as Gabriel’s mouth found his first raw knuckle. The kiss was too rough against the tender spot, but when he flinched back, the other held him fastidiously. The next came with a fleeting roll of his tongue. The third was chaste, the fourth barely there at all.

Each touch had lasted less than a second and yet, when Gabriel straightened, a smear of blood painted his lips red.

“Let me remedy that.”

Jack’s heartbeat pulsed in his ears, drowning out the bass behind him.

Gabriel said nothing else; he simply led Jack deeper into the shrouded alley, and sank to his knees.

 

 

 

**PRESENT **—****

 

Weekday afternoons dragged sluggishly for any dive bar, and Jack found _The Cellar_ no different. Blues music crooned over the jukebox but neither of the two patrons slumped at the counter seemed to listen. Before them, the familiar bartender wiped down glasses with a dirty rag. His scraggy hair was gathered into a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck today. It left his lined, pockmarked face looking taut and severe.

One look at Jack made him slap down the glass with a heavy _thunk._

“No freebies today, Vet. Not when you don’t bother to drink ‘em,” the man groused.

Jack gave a wide shrug to match his crooked grin. “I see a beautiful woman and I gotta go after her. Can’t blame a man for that, can you?”

The barstool thumped hard on the worn floorboards when he pulled it out. Both men beside him gave a momentary pause at the loud sound. Then, they sank back into their conversation and drinks with barely a delay. Jack was a nameless, faceless newcomer to them -- not even worthy of attention. That suited him just fine.

“No way she went home with you.”

Jack sat down and laid his forearms on the bartop. “Didn’t say she did. Spent twenty minutes throwing myself at her feet and then she tells me she’s got a boyfriend.”

“Ain’t that always the case.” The man’s hands took pause on his task as he watched Jack appraisingly. If he had any reservations serving him, they had been put to rest. “Alright, soldier. What’ll it be?”

He slid his eyes not to the liquor shelves, but to the sharp insignia on the wall. The red-eyed elongated skull stamped above _THE CELLAR_ lacked the same flourish as the one branded on Gabriel’s neck. Against his skin, the tattoo carried detail rivaling an illustration _—_ here, it had been tacked on last minute.

“Everclear,” he answered a moment later, planting his eyes right back on the bartender.

“It’s one in the afternoon,” the man returned dryly. “Might be a bit strong.”

“I dunno,” Jack drawled, “that’s a Midwestern boy’s bread and butter right there.”

He puffed out a humorless laugh and went for the shelf. “Don’t know shit about the Midwest, but if you say so. You want that as a shot?”

Jack tapped his nail against the empty glass in front of him and slid it forward for emphasis.

At that, the bartender hesitated. “Watered down?”

Jack smiled cool and persistent even as he shook his head _no._

“Some tolerance you Midwestern guys must have,” the other noted, idly pouring two fingers of Everclear into the glass. He capped the bottle after, and sent it to the shelf. “There you go. Finish it, don’t finish it — I’m still charging.”

“Thank you.” Jack brought the tumbler to his mouth and even touched the rim to his lip, but stopped short of drinking. The careful hesitance was enough to hold the bartender’s attention a little longer.

“Hey,” Jack began slowly — the portrait of genuine curiosity, “what’s that sigil up there for? The little skull. Saw it last time but never got the chance to ask.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“If there’s a story, I’d like to hear it.”

“There ain’t no story,” the bartender snapped.

Jack ignored him, lowering the glass from his mouth. “It’s just…  I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere before, but I can’t place it.”

“Yeah? Well, that was done by my buddy’s kid. Said he thought it looked cool, so unless he’s drawin’ those all over town, I don’t fuckin’ know.”

Patience had always been Gabriel’s territory. His temper simmered low and hot in the wake of an obstacle, but he rarely let anger boil over into rage. Major Crimes relied on him with difficult interrogations; he could press endlessly until some suspect tripped themselves up in a tangle of lies. 

Then, he’d been assigned with Jack. While Gabriel could get a confession in a handful of hours, Jack only needed a few minutes and a camera switched off.

Under the bartender’s callous stare, Jack found his own smile fading fast. Tension sank into his fingertips, making his hands feel hot and heavy with a want for the gun and blade on his person. Gone was his affected Midwestern accent and the way he fidgeted with the glass. “How about we try that again without the bullshit? Who told you to put the Black Watch mark there?”

 _Black Watch_. The name had the man straightening to attention off the counter. He wore the same fear Angela Ziegler had, and like her, it quickly shifted into anger. “Get the fuck outta my bar before you and me have a problem.”

When Jack didn’t immediately move, the man’s fury doubled. The two other patrons took notice.

“You hear what I said? Tryin’ to start shit — knew somethin’ was off about you. Get the fuck outta here.”

Jack hummed at that. They always picked the hard way.

Leaning back, Jack searched his person for the red embossed cigarette pack. He was nearly out; the half-smashed box held only two more.

Behind him, the old jukebox buzzed, desperately trying to load up the next song on the docket. Static flooded the the speakers, washing out the bartender’s snarled barrage. Jack ignored it all. His attention shifted to his cheap lighter and bringing it to spark. The flame caught the end of his cigarette, then gave way to plumes of smoke.

He took a second to enjoy the initial pull, but the wild buzz and the verbal attack brought him quickly back to the present.

The whole thing happened very quick. When the bartender threw down his hands on the table and leaned in to curse -- something about his mother’s cunt -- Jack snapped into action. He took the glass of Everclear, splashed it the man’s face, and lunged over the counter after him.

Anguished howls filled the bar. The two other men scrambled back, their stools clattering noisily to the floor. Jack wasted no time shoving the bartender down into the counter. His cheek smashed against its surface, and try as he might, he couldn’t get his hands up to shield his burning eyes.

Across the room, the jukebox gave another harsh _click_ and finally loaded in a new song. A crooning voice carried over the man’s hoarse shouting, melodic and upbeat.

Teeth marks lined the filter of his cigarette when he pulled it free from his lips; he nearly bit through it during the struggle. Jack cast the building ash aside and tipped its end near the others inflamed eye, now swollen shut. Prying his lid open took several fumbling seconds -- the older man whimpered and twisted helplessly until Jack’s weight kept him pinned. Then, the bloodshot sclera swam into view, teary eyed and vein choked. His pupil was a pinpoint against the deep cobalt iris.

Molten red and electric blue, framed by fear as the lit cherry drew closer and closer.

“Fuck -- don’t, d-don’t -- I’ll tell you what you want -- please don’t, _please!"_

Jack’s smile returned, a small quirk of his mouth that looked soft from a distance. His hardened stare didn’t match the expression, nor did his curled, white knuckled hands.

“We got off on the wrong foot, didn’t we?” he asked lightly.

Another strangled cry, but this time a nod, too.

“I don’t like being the bad guy,” he continued in an idle drawl, “but someone was taken from me. I’d like them back. You wanna tell me why you’ve really got Black Watch’s insignia on your wall?”

Gabriel might have pulled sobbing confessions out of guilty souls, but Jack made them _sing._

“Guy came in.” The words tumbled out of the bartender’s mouth so quick, they ran together in a rough slur. “Rich fuck in a suit -- Mexican or somethin’, I don’t know. T-told me he knew all about my problems with Talon, told me --”

“Who?” Jack pressed. “Who’s Talon?”

“Jesus kid, you don’t fuckin’ know? You really got no fuckin’ clue -- if it ain’t squarely under Blackwatch’s thumb, they got it firmly in their hands. Every fuckin’ gang in this city answers to one or the other. They got eyes _everywhere_. You think they won’t know? You think they won’t find out who your sorry ass is?”

Paranoia flared white hot in Jack’s chest, sending him staggering back. Were they watching him? All of them, Talon, Black Watch, _Gabriel?_ Were they watching him _right now_?

The cigarette fell lifeless from Jack’s fingers. He didn’t need to scan the corners of the room to know somewhere a camera watched this unfold.

Free from an iron hold, the other man collapsed from the counter into a wounded heap. Hands and feet scrabbled at the tacky floor, shoving himself back to put as much space between them as possible. He looked small and pathetic huddled onto the ground --  his puffy eyes once more sealed shut, his cheek purpling from impact with the counter.

And yet when he croaked out a laugh, Jack felt the world tilt on its axis, reversing their positions.

The song drifting through the speakers faded and died. Static filled the bar. The jukebox _click-clicked_ to find the next record, but no music came.

“You stupid sonuvabitch,” the man rasped with spiteful delight, “you’re dead. Talon, Blackwatch, it don’t matter. You’re fuckin’ _dead_ when they find you.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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>  [**C I N C O** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d2NEZ7hnZk)
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> Thank you to @hanzbow, @overbinch and others on twitter continuously being supportive. This chapter was completed and edited in January, but fandom hostility made me take a large break. I know I promised this chapter as much more violent and longer, but I decided to split it up into this and the next (chpt 6). Thank you to those that have been reading despite the unreliable updates.  
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